Assessment of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery test in Saudi children with learning disabilities: A case-control study
-
1
King Fahad Specialist Hospital Dammam, Neuroscience center, Saudi Arabia
-
2
King Saud University, Medicine, Saudi Arabia
Background: The neuropsychological tests and its subtests composed of the motor planning task; simple reaction time task and the intradimensional/extradimensional shift (IED) task from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) were developed to examine specific components of cognition. The main objective of this study was to examine the reliability of these CANTAB subtests in pediatric patients with learning disabilities (LD) in Saudi Arabia.
Methods: We administered the CANTAB subset test to 92 participants with LD and 68 controls with no LD. The tests performed were motor planning task (MOT), simple reaction time task (SRT) and the intradimensional/extradimensional shift (IED).
Results:
There were no significant differences between the case and the control group (case: 9.2 ± 2.4 years versus controls: 9.0 ± 1.6 years, p=0.544). The IED and MOT were significantly longer among patients with LD versus control (p <0.001). LD cases had a longer SRT time than controls (cases: 1050.4 ± 626.5 versus controls: 815.5 ± 133.9, p=0.003). LD patients completed an average of 3.0 stages, than the controls, who were able to complete a mean of 8.4 IED stages (p<0.001). SRT was significantly longer in the case group (965.9 ± 716.4) compared to the controls (747.7 ± 120.7, p=0.014). LD cases made errors in the motor screening tasks (MOT-Error) compared to the control group (case: 14.6 ± 4.5 versus controls: 12.4 ± 2.7, p<0.001).
Conclusion: Patients with LD have poor CANTAB subtest results. If these CANTAB subtests do measure cognitive function, this adds to the accumulating evidence of cognitive impairment association in LD, and such studies should remain an active area of research.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grant from Deanship of Scientific Research (RGP-1438-048) of King Saud University, Riyadh.
Keywords:
Cognition,
neurodevelopment,
Autism Spectrum Disorders,
Learning Disorders,
Saudi Arabia
Conference:
3rd International Conference on Educational Neuroscience, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 11 Mar - 12 Mar, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Educational Neuroscience
Citation:
Bashir
S,
Al Backer
N,
Alharbi
KA,
Alfahadi
A and
Habib
SS
(2018). Assessment of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery test in Saudi children with learning disabilities: A case-control study.
Conference Abstract:
3rd International Conference on Educational Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.225.00023
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
08 Feb 2018;
Published Online:
14 Dec 2018.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Shahid Bashir, King Fahad Specialist Hospital Dammam, Neuroscience center, Dammam, Saudi Arabia, sbashir10@gmail.com