Reaction times of correct and incorrect performances are highly correlated no matter age groups but older age affects accuracy and speed relationships in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons
Abstract
Description
Background
The detection of non-amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment with difficult tasks as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is still under debate. Associations concerning performance and/or speed are not usually evaluated even though speed decreases with age and so, the WCST may be preferentially administered in a computerized format. Therefore, 3 types of relationships were looked for: 1) between reaction times (RT) of correct and incorrect answers; 2) between the percentage of correct responses and RT of correct responses; and lastly, 3) between the percentage of incorrect responses and RT of incorrect responses.
Method
Two age groups, one group of executives of the INEGI (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics) (n = 12, 46.71 ± 5) and another one of older adults (OAs) who attended a “Centro Gerontológico Integral” in the state of Hidalgo in Mexico (n = 17, 66.35 ± 6) were evaluated.
Result
The RT of correct and incorrect performances were highly correlated for both groups (INEGI group: r = 0.80, p = 0.01; OAs: r = 0.89, p = 0.01). Instead, the correlations between performance and speed were only negatively related for the percentage of correct responses and RT of correct responses in the group of the INEGI (r = - 0.72, p = 0.02), while they had a tendency to be positive in OAs although not significant (r = 0.43, p = 0.10). The percentage of incorrect responses and RT of incorrect responses was positive and significant for the group of the INEGI (r = 0.84, p = 0.01) and tended to be negative and not significant for OAs (r = - 0.48, p = 0.10).
Conclusion
A positive correlation between RT of correct and incorrect answers was found, suggesting a consistent speed within subjects no matter the performance. A negative correlation was found for the percentage of correct responses and RT of correct responses in the group of the INEGI. However, this late relationship and the one concerning wrong performance was not confirmed for OAs, indicating that speed when decision making and problem solving are assessed suffer from severe alterations with age.