How Did I Do?
This year I had the pleasure of researching at the Montreal Neurological Institute in the Cognitive Neuroscience unit. Throughout the last two semesters, I’ve been administering two relatively new tests to participants in order to improve neuropsychological markers of frontal-lobe dysfunction. One of the two tests is referred to as the Self-Ordered Pointing Task (SOPT, Petrides & Milner, 1982), which examines the role of the human lateral prefrontal cortex in the processing of self-monitoring of internally-generated actions. The other test is referred to as the Conditional Associative-Learning Task (CAL, Petrides, 1985), which examines the ability to learn arbitrary associations between stimuli or between stimuli and responses. Several studies in both human and non-human subjects have shown that SOPT and CAL are sensitive to damage in different brain areas in the frontal cortex — the mid-dorsal lateral prefrontal and the posterior dorsolateral frontal cortex, respectively (Petrides, 1985; Petrides, 1991).
However, the normative data available for these tasks have mostly been collected from small neurologically healthy groups or homogenous groups from a narrow age range. Thus, my main objective this year was to collect a comprehensive set of normative data for these tasks with the hypothesis that there will be an effect of age on the performance of these tests in neurologically healthy subjects.
Throughout my testing experience, I’ve learnt a lot, like how to prepare the testing files, how to set up appointments with subjects, how to score the data collected and most importantly, how to keep a poker face for an hour long without giving any facial and bodily cues that might influence responses. Although, the most difficult thing I had to learn was when to disclose results to participants.
“Wow, that was so hard!”, “I feel like I just bombed that test!”, “Excuse my idiocy, I must be your worse subject!” I’ve heard these statements numerous times and I can’t help but wonder whether I am actually collecting data or damaging their self-esteem. And then the famous question comes along… “How did I do?”
This is where things get tricky. On the one hand, you do not want to disappoint a subject since he or she did take the time (and the luxury to accept compensation) to participate. On the other hand, according to professor and author Bernard Lo (2010), the benefits of disclosing individual test results need to be balanced against the risks and burdens. If the results on these clinical tests are urgent and need emergency attention, then I should plan to notify my supervisors and the participant in a timely matter. However, since the clinical validity has not been established, the inference would be to not disclose the results because clinicians will not be able to tell subjects whether an abnormal test result means that the patient has the functional deficit being studied (Lo, 2010).
Therefore, since the results of the tests will not be provided, my challenge as a researcher is to prepare to explain why this is the case. In my study, there are two instances where the subject where this occurs — pre-and post-test. Before testing begins, I give the subject a consent form, which outlines the description of the procedure, the advantages of participating as well as the purpose of the study. With each subject, I emphasize that they are helping me find out “what is normal” in relation to these tests because that is what is lacking in my lab. After the hour of testing, I encourage them by saying that they performed well despite that these tests are difficult, but I also remind them that since the raw scores on these tests are not scaled, they do not give us any value of comparison on their own.
Conclusively, I advise them that the question of “How did I do?” cannot be answered in this study at this point in time, but give it at least a few years and some psychometric analyses later, and it might be.
Lo, B. (2010). Ethical issues in clinical research: a practical guide. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Petrides, M., & Milner, B. (1982). Deficits on subject-ordered tasks after frontal-lobe and temporal-lobe lesions in man. Neuropsychologia, 20(3), 249–62.
Petrides, M. (1985). Deficits on conditional associative-learning tasks after frontal-lobe and temporal-lobe Lesions in man. Neuropsychologia, 23(5), 601–14.
Petrides, M. (1985). Deficits in non-spatial conditional associative learning after periarcuate lesions in the monkey. Behavioural Brain Research, 16(2–3), 95–101.
Petrides, M. (1991). Monitoring of selections of visual stimuli and the primate frontal cortex. Proc. R. Soc. London B 246, 293–98.
