Reliability and validity of neurobehavioral function on the Psychology Experimental Building Language test battery in young-adults

Brian J Piper; Shane T Mueller; Alexander R Geerken; Kyle L Dixon; Gregory Kroliczak; Reid HJ Olsen; Jeremy K Miller

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.1331v1

Reliability and validity of neurobehavioral function on the Psychology Experimental Building Language test battery in young-adults

Brian J Piper ¹, Shane T Mueller², Alexander R Geerken³, Kyle L Dixon⁴, Gregory Kroliczak⁵, Reid HJ Olsen^6,7, Jeremy K Miller³

1 Department of Psychology, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, United States

2 Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, United States

3 Department of Psychology, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, United States

4 Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States

5 Action and Cognition Laboratory, Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poznan, Poland

6 Department of Behavioral Neuroscience, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR, United States

7 Pharmacology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1331v1

Published: 2015-08-29
Accepted: 2015-08-29

Subject Areas: Psychiatry and Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction
Keywords: attention, executive function, learning, motor, memory, cognition, neuropsychology, decision making, sex differences, human

Copyright: © 2015 Piper et al.
Licence: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

Cite this article: Piper BJ, Mueller ST, Geerken AR, Dixon KL, Kroliczak G, Olsen RH, Miller JK. 2015. Reliability and validity of neurobehavioral function on the Psychology Experimental Building Language test battery in young-adults. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1331v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1331v1

Abstract

Background. The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software consists of over one-hundred computerized tests based on classic cognitive neuropsychology and behavioral neurology measures. Although the PEBL tests are becoming more widely utilized, there is currently very limited information about the psychometric properties of these measures. Methods. Study I examined inter-relationships among ten PEBL tests including indices of motor-function (Pursuit Rotor and Dexterity), attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance and Time-Wall), working memory (Digit Span Forward), and executive-function (PEBL Trail Making Test, Berg/Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Iowa Gambling Test, and Mental Rotation) in a normative sample (N = 189, ages 18-22). Study II evaluated test-retest reliability with a two-week interest interval between administrations in a separate sample (N = 79, ages 18-22). Results. Moderate intra-test, but low inter-test, correlations were observed and ceiling/floor effects were uncommon. Sex differences were identified on the Pursuit Rotor (Cohen’s d = 0.89) and Mental Rotation (d = 0.31) tests. The correlation between the test and retest was high for tests of motor learning (Pursuit Rotor time on target r = .86) and attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance response time r = .79), intermediate for memory (digit span r = .63) but lower for the executive function indices (Wisconsin/Berg Card Sorting Test perseverative errors = .45, Tower of London moves = .15). Significant practice effects were identified on several indices of executive function. Conclusions. These results are broadly supportive of the reliability and validity of individual PEBL tests in this sample. These findings indicate that the freely downloadable, open-source, PEBL battery http://pebl.sourceforge.net is a versatile research tool to study individual differences in neurocognitive performance.