Automated Test-battery for Psychopharmacological Research
This test-battery was developed for N. V. Organon by KIKO Software, in collaboration with the Nijmegen Institute of Cognition and Information (NICI) and Klingental Drug Development Consultancy (KDDC), as a comprehensive battery of fully computerized tests, to be used with volunteers to identify changes in Central Nervous System (CNS) functions that are caused by new chemical entities selected for clinical development, and to chart and predict their efficacy and side-effects. The test-battery was developed by Cor Sennef (Organon), Henk van Riezen (KDDC), Willem Pieter de Jong (NICI), and Wouter Hulstijn (NICI). It is implemented in the OASIS software package macro language. The test-battery is not for sale, but usage of the tests, for non-commercial purposes, is possible after the permission of the N. V. Organon has been obtained.
13 Sub-tests
The test-battery currently consists of 13 sub-tests. The tests are administered automatically, without supervision, and can be completed within an hour. These tests assess a wide variety of motor and cognitive functions. You can read more about these tests in the comprehensive manual to the OASIS Based Automated Test-battery for Psychopharmacological Research (1.2 MB ZIP-file).
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Name of test:
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This test measures:
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FITTS
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Quick & accurate motor responses
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WORDS
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Response to words and non-words
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PHRASE
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Kinematics of writing
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THOMASSEN
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Grammar of action
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TANGLES
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Visual tracking
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TRACKING
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Eye-hand coordination
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PURSUIT
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Rotor pursuit
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SDST
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Symbol-digit substitution
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COINS
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Percentual maze
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SWITCH
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Switching attention task
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TRAILS
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Sequencing
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MEMORY
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Picture memory
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LOCKER
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Visual-spatial memory
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On the right-hand side of this page two of these sub-tests, the tracking task, and the SDST task, are discussed.
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Eye-hand coordination
In this test eye-hand co-ordination is assessed. The subject has to move a cursor along a curved path without touching the borders of that path. The task was also chosen for its conceptual similarity to the tangles task, substituting actual motor tracing for visual tracing. A very similar task was used by Meyer- Lindenberg et al. (1997) and shown to be sensitive to drug effects. The paths are presented on the screen as is shown in the figure below.
The form only has a 'start' area and a 'finish' area to indicate the size of the tracking area. The time available for actual tracking is three minutes. Pauses between trials are not included in these three minutes.
Symbol-digit substitution
The subject is to substitute numbers for symbols on the basis of a given key. The test is modelled after the code substitution test of Pepper et al. (1985). Code-substitution is also a part of the test battery used by Bittner et al. (1983, 1986). It is one of the most frequently used psychological tests for the assessment of psychomotor function and concentration.
In most test batteries subjects have to replace numbers by symbols in code substitutions tests. We, however, prefer the substitution of symbols by numbers because the writing of numbers is highly over-learned in most people and probably much easier and more quickly accomplished than the drawing of abstract symbols. Drug effects on code transcription are therefore more likely to be caused by concentration or psychomotor co-ordination problems only. Code substitution is well known to be disease (depression, Parkinson, schizophrenia) and drug sensitive (Hawkins et al., 1995, Rogers et al., 1987, Lynch et al., 1997, & Peretti et al., 1997).
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