Online and Face-to-Face Performance on Two Cognitive Tasks in Children With Williams Syndrome

Abstract

There has been an increase in cognitive assessment via the Internet, especially since the coronavirus disease 2019 surged the need for remote psychological assessment. This is the first study to investigate the appropriability of conducting cognitive assessments online with children with a neurodevelopmental condition and intellectual disability, namely, Williams syndrome. This study compared Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM) and British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS) scores from two different groups of children with WS age 10–11 years who were assessed online (n = 14) or face-to-face (RCPM n = 12; BPVS n = 24). Bayesian t-tests showed that children’s RCPM scores were similar across testing conditions, but suggested BPVS scores were higher for participants assessed online. The differences between task protocols are discussed in line with these findings, as well as the implications for neurodevelopmental research.

Evaluating the potential impact of online assessment on students' academic performance

“…While the majority of prior studies in this theme focus on implementation (e.g., Singh & Wassermann, 2016), adoption and continuous intention to use (e.g., Terzis et al, 2013) as well as design of technical solutions (e.g., Kuo & Wu, 2013) of online assessment, a few studies (e.g., Ashworth et al, 2021;Elmehdi & Ibrahem, 2019;Sánchez-Cabrero et al, 2021;Spivey and McMillan, 2014) investigate the differences in students' performance. Notwithstanding the contributions of these studies, there are contradictory findings on the use of paper-based and online assessments.…”

“…Despite the growing research and practical interests, there have been limited studies on the impact of online assessment on students' academic performance. Majority of the studies, with a few exceptions (e.g., Ashworth et al, 2021;Elmehdi & Ibrahem, 2019;Sánchez-Cabrero et al, 2021;Spivey and McMillan, 2014) are focused on adoption and perception (e.g., Nikou & Economides, 2016;Or & Chapman, 2022), students' experiences (e.g., Mafenya, 2016;Soffer et al, 2017), feedback (e.g., Cutumisu, 2018;Van Der Kleij, Eggen, Timmers, & Veldkamp, Online Assessment and Students' Academic Performance 2 2012), and engagement (e.g., Alavi & Gallupe, 2003;Browne et al, 2006). The few studies that have evaluated the impact of online assessment on students' performance show contradictory findings.…”

“…Given the contradictory findings of existing literature, there is currently inconclusive evidence on the impact of online assessment on students' academic performance. Moreover, studies (e.g., Ashworth et al, 2021;Sánchez-Cabrero et al, 2021;Spivey and McMillan 2014) that evaluate the impact of online assessment have largely relied on assessment results without complementing these with the views of students. Given that students' opinions matter regarding how they are assessed, it is important to evaluate if there is divergence in students' views and their performance to advance the ongoing debate on online and paper-based assessments.…”

Neuropsychological assessments for dementia research in the COVID-19 era: comparing remote and face-to-face testing

“…A Bayes factor, which is the ratio of evidence supporting the null hypothesis over the alternative hypothesis (hereafter BF 01 ) was calculated for each comparison using JASP. A BF 01 value > 3 indicates strong evidence in favour of the null hypothesis while a value < 0.33 supports the alternative hypothesis; BF 01 values between 0.33 and 3 are classified as ‘anecdotal’ evidence, comparable to non-significant differences in inferential statistics 41 42 . Bayes factor values are presented in Tables S3 and S4.…”

Zoom, Zoom, Baby! Assessing Mother-Infant Interaction During the Still Face Paradigm and Infant Language Development via a Virtual Visit Procedure

“…Findings indicate that speech and language characteristics (e.g., mean length utterance, number of different words) among toddlers during play with a parent (Manning et al, 2020 ) and performance on a standardized language assessment among school-age children with language impairment (Sutherland et al, 2017 ) showed good feasibility, and reliability and/or validity of assessments did not differ significantly from data collected during face-to-face sessions. Ashworth et al ( 2021 ), however, reported significantly higher verbal performance (assessed via the British Picture Vocabulary Scale, Third Edition [BPVS-3]) during online virtual visits vs. laboratory visits among school-aged children with Williams syndrome. Although these past studies indicate utility of conducting language assessments among toddlers and school-aged children via a virtual visit platform, we are unaware of prior work that has compared infant language assessments conducted via a synchronous virtual visit vs. an in-person laboratory format.…”