The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT): normative data for the Italian population

Abstract

The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) is a neuropsychological instrument designed to measure attention, working memory and speed of information processing in a complex manner. It is currently used to evaluate different neurological diseases. the purpose of this study was to establish PASAT normative data for the healthy Italian population using the standardized methodology of Equivalents Scores. the brief PASAT auditory version included in the Multiple Sclerosis Functional Composite was administered to 146 healthy Italian participants, distributed for gender (70 men; 76 women), age (range 18-83) and education (8-19). We found that age and education, but not gender, were significant PASAT score predictors. PASAT normative Italian data may represent a useful application for clinicians and researchers to document mild executive deficits in different neurological populations.

Deficient GABABergic and glutamatergic excitability in the motor cortex of patients with long-COVID and cognitive impairment

“…The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) (Nocentini et al, 2006) requires quickly associating symbols with numbers, and measures the speed of processing visual information, oculomotor coordination, sustained attention and learning new visual information. The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task ( Saetti et al, 2021 ) consists in a task in which numbers are presented orally at a rate of 3 seconds and the person must quickly perform serial additions, adding each number to the previous one. The test measures the speed of processing auditory-verbal information, sustained attention in auditory mode, divided attention and verbal working memory.…”

Changes in psychological and cognitive variables as well as cortisol levels in recovered Covid-19 patients: a longitudinal study

“…In terms of cognitive evaluation of patients with different disease severities, our results showed that although the rate of correct response was lower in all studied groups compared to the healthy individuals in optimal states (i.e., a PASAT score of about 70 to 80% correct answers) (Aliyari et al, 2018 ; Saetti et al, 2021 ; Woods et al, 2018 ), as shown in Fig. 1 (their mean was between 20 and 60% based on the correct response percentage), an improvement was observed during the study and over time.…”

“…The split-half reliability of this test was showed that this test shows the validated results of executive functions in various clinical populations and is the useful measurement to correlate with the results from other neuropsychological tests (Saetti et al, 2021 ). However, it should be noted that the results of this test should be used with caution, because its clinical application is limited.…”

Cognitive abnormalities in Becker muscular dystrophy: a mysterious link between dystrophin deficiency and executive functions

“…However, a task will engage WM the more the manipulation of the elements is required [ 18 ]. The tests assaying working memory in the battery, listed in order from those that engage working memory the most to those engaging it the least, are as follows: Dual Task [ 26 ], Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) [ 27 ], Corsi Span-Backward, and Digit Span-Backward [ 28 ].…”