title: Convergent validity of executive organization measures on cancellation.
abstract: Cancellation tests have traditionally been used to measure visuospatial neglect. Recently, such tests have also been viewed as potential measures of executive function. Mark and colleagues (2004; Disorganized search on cancellation is not a consequence of neglect. Neurology, 63, 78-84) developed three objective measures of organization based on reconstructing target-marking pathways from one form of a cancellation test: mean inter-target distance, path intersection rate, and a quantification of overall path uniformity (i.e., predominantly radial versus horizontal cancellation progress) that they termed "best r". However, the validity of these measures with respect to a subjective judgment of organization was not assessed. In the present study, 50 observers rated the overall organization of 50 reconstructed pathways from stroke patients and non-brain-injured adults to allow evaluating the convergent validity of the three proposed executive organization measures. Inter-target distance (r = .86), intersection rate (r = .87), and best r (r = -.69) were all found to be highly correlated with observer ratings. These results indicate good convergent validity for all three executive organization measures on a form of the cancellation test.
authors: Department of Psychology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA. ajwoods@gwu.edu
authors: Adam J
authors: AJ
authors: Woods
authors: Victor W
authors: VW
authors: Mark
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020521:Stroke / Q000503:physiopathology*