Administration of the IVA-QS

[madpsych78]

Hey everyone,

Quick question about the administration of the IVA-QS, which is a continuous performance test administered on the computer. I was told by the psychometrician at our office that during the administration of the IVA-QS, you are supposed to drop a pencil, cough, etc. to introduce distractions during the administration of the task (kind of like Statue on the NEPSY-II). I have never done anything like this with any continuous performance test and have never seen that done.

What are your thoughts about this? I feel like introducing Statue-like conditions on a continuous performance test could potentially compromise the integrity of the test.

By the way, I am a post-doctoral fellow at a neuropsychology private practice but I have also practiced as a school psychologist.

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[Justanothergrad]

Disclaimer: I don't know that continuous performance test. That said, I'd love to read the section of the administration manual that explains how to standardize the administration of a cough or the sound made when dropping a pencil.

 

[WisNeuro]

The best way to administer this test is to simply turn the computer off and give a test with some actual predictive validity.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I'd be surprised if that's actually specified in the manual, but anything's possible. If it is in the manual, the text should be able to specify what to actually do. But it sounds more like hand-me-down clinical lore to me.

 

[madpsych78]

The best way to administer this test is to simply turn the computer off and give a test with some actual predictive validity.

What test(s) would you recommend to assess visual and auditory sustained attention, particularly in children?

I'd be surprised if that's actually specified in the manual, but anything's possible. If it is in the manual, the text should be able to specify what to actually do. But it sounds more like hand-me-down clinical lore to me.

That's what I was thinking too. And as I said, the NEPSY-II does make those types of specifications on the Statue subtest - specifically the times at which to execute the tasks. Drop pencil at 10 seconds, cough once at 20 seconds, 30 seconds knock on the table twice, etc.

 

[AbnormalPsych]

What does the manual say?

 

[WisNeuro]

What test(s) would you recommend to assess visual and auditory sustained attention, particularly in children?

This is an area where the clinical world does not have many tests that excel at measuring this, especially from a sensitivity/specificity point of view. The world of experimental psych/neuroscience has some interesting attention tasks (ANT and others), but they haven't yet been ported for clinical use widely. But, in children, I would say that the SDMT and TEA are better than the IVA. The Ruff 2&7 has good psychometrics, but I don't know how low the norms go. In general the IVA tests out there have poor test-retest reliability and poor sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing ADHD. It's been a few years since I've delved into the child testing lit, but I'd be surprised if anything has changed much in this area. If someone knows of some high quality data to the contrary, I'd be willing to revise my opinion of the test.