title: Computerized neuropsychological testing to rapidly evaluate cognition in pediatric patients with neurologic disorders.
abstract: Computerized neuropsychological tests represent a viable method for rapidly screening cognition. The purpose of this study was to explore performance on the CNS Vital Signs in a large pediatric neurology sample. Participants included 166 neurology patients (mean age, 13.0 years; standard deviation, 3.2) and 281 controls (mean age, 13.2 years; standard deviation, 3.2) between 7 and 19 years. The neurology sample performed significantly worse on all domain scores and nearly all subtest scores. Cohen d effect sizes were small to medium for verbal memory (d= 0.44), visual memory (d= 0.40), and reaction time (d= 0.48) and very large for psychomotor speed (d= 1.19), complex attention (d = 0.94), cognitive flexibility (d = 0.94), and the overall composite score (d = 1.08). Using the criterion for cognitive impairment of 2 or more scores ≤5th percentile, 36.6% of the neurology sample was identified as having an uncommon cognitive profile. This is the first study to demonstrate the performance of pediatric patients with neurologic disorders on CNS Vital Signs.
authors.affiliation: Alberta Children's Hospital and University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. brian.brooks@albertahealthservices.ca
authors.forename: Brian L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Brooks
authors.forename: Elisabeth M S
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Sherman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D009422:Nervous System Diseases / Q000150:complications*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014706:Verbal Learning