title: Test-retest reliability and task order effects of emotional cognitive tests in healthy subjects.
abstract: Little is known of the retest reliability of emotional cognitive tasks or the impact of using different tasks employing similar emotional stimuli within a battery. We investigated this in healthy subjects. We found improved overall performance in an emotional attentional blink task (EABT) with repeat testing at one hour and one week compared to baseline, but the impact of an emotional stimulus on performance was unchanged. Similarly, performance on a facial expression recognition task (FERT) was better one week after a baseline test, though the relative effect of specific emotions was unaltered. There was no effect of repeat testing on an emotional word categorising, recall and recognition task. We found no difference in performance in the FERT and EABT irrespective of task order. We concluded that it is possible to use emotional cognitive tasks in longitudinal studies and combine tasks using emotional facial stimuli in a single battery.
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.|b Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Adams
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.
authors.forename: Zoe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Pounder
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.|b Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.
authors.forename: Sally
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Preston
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.
authors.forename: Andy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hanson
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gallagher
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychiatry , University of Oxford , Oxford , UK.
authors.forename: Catherine J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Harmer
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.|b Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust , Newcastle upon Tyne , UK.
authors.forename: R Hamish
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: McAllister-Williams
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011581:Psychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Test–retest reliability; attentional blink; emotional test battery; facial emotion recognition task