Evidence of Validity for a Newly Developed Digital Cognitive Test Battery

Abstract

Clinical practice still relies heavily on traditional paper-and-pencil testing to assess a patient's cognitive functions. Digital technology has the potential to be an efficient and powerful alternative, but for many of the existing digital tests and test batteries the psychometric properties have not been properly established. We validated a newly developed digital test battery consisting of digitized versions of conventional neuropsychological tests. Two confirmatory factor analysis models were specified: a model based on traditional neuropsychological theory and expert consensus and one based on the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) taxonomy. For both models, the outcome measures of the digital tests loaded on the cognitive domains in the same way as established in the neuropsychological literature. Interestingly, no clear distinction could be made between the CHC model and traditional neuropsychological model in terms of model fit. Taken together, these findings provide preliminary evidence for the structural validity of the digital cognitive test battery.

Philips IntelliSpace Cognition digital test battery: Equivalence and measurement invariance compared to traditional analog test versions

“…Overall, we found fair to excellent agreement between the ISC and analog test battery, with the majority of ISC tests showing equivalence to their analog counterparts. These findings are in line with those found for other digital cognitive test batteries (e.g., Björngrim et al, 2019;Weintraub et al, 2013). A few differences were found which were mostly limited to drawing tests.…”

“…In order to reduce the number of parameters in the configural model, we fixed residual covariances of the manifest variables to be equal across modalities (Cole & Maxwell, 2003). The model specification is a slight adaptation of a theory-driven model that was previously used to establish initial evidence of validity of a Dutch prototype version of the ISC test battery (Vermeent et al, 2020). The model differed from the one presented in Vermeent et al because some tests included in the prototype version were not included in the clinically available second version of ISC studied here.…”

“…ISC contains digital versions of existing analog tests (as opposed to tests specifically created for the digital domain; Koo & Vizer, 2019). In a previous article, we provided initial validation data using a prototype version of ISC in a Dutch sample and concluded that the digital tests measured the same underlying constructs as commonly found in the (analog-based) literature (Vermeent et al, 2020).…”

The journey is just as important as the destination—Digital neuropsychological assessment provides performance stability measures in patients with acquired brain injury

“…We aimed to adopt a similar approach to compute performance stability for each test (see "Measures of performance stability"). The software of the d-NPA was a research prototype created by Philips Research [17]. A tablet was placed in front of the participant and the neuropsychologist sat across them while controlling the tests on a regular laptop.…”

Digital neuropsychological assessment: Feasibility and applicability in patients with acquired brain injury

“…The software of the d-NPA was a research prototype developed by Philips Research (Vermeent et al, 2020). The software included test descriptions, test instructions, administration forms to record observations, and stimuli (auditory and visual).…”