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Retest effects refer to performance improvements in a final test by completing previous tests with the same or similar testing materials. Improvements in test-related skills and/or increasing familiarity with the stimulus materials are considered sources of the retest effect. The present study analyzes retest effects in the context of spatial thinking, considering complementing perspectives (behavioral performance, cognitive processing, and cognitive workload). N = 141 participants completed a recently developed ability test for the visualization factor of spatial thinking (R-Cube-Vis Test). This test provides the opportunity to monitor the progression of changes in solving behavior from item to item within each of the six distinct difficulty levels. Items of one difficulty level all require the same spatial solving strategy but vary in visual appearance. Multi-level models were estimated, with items on level 1 and participants on level 2. Results demonstrated retest effects as changes from the beginning to the end of a set of items within each difficulty level by increasing accuracy. Gaze patterns showed the development of solving strategies by participants through, e.g., shifting the focus on relevant item parts. Increasing familiarity with the stimulus materials was indicated in reduced reaction times and increased confidence ratings, but also by the results of a pupillary-based cognitive workload measure. Furthermore, differences between participants with overall high vs. low spatial ability were considered. In addition to a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the retest effect, the complementing perspectives provide more detailed information about individual ability profiles for diagnostic purposes.

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Background: In longitudinal designs, the extraneous influence of retest effects can confound and obscure estimates of developmental change. The current study provides a novel approach to independently parameterize short-term retest effects and long-term developmental change estimates by leveraging a measurement burst design and three-level multilevel modeling. We further employ these short- and long-term slopes as predictors of cognitive status at long-term follow-up assessments. Methods: Participants included 304 older adults from Project MIND: a longitudinal measurement burst study assessing cognitive performance across both biweekly sessions and annual retests. Participants were classified as either Healthy controls (HC) or Cognitively Impaired, not Demented (CIND) at baseline, the final burst assessment (Year 4), and at an additional four-year follow-up (Year 8). Response time inconsistencies (RTI) were computed at each burst occasion for a simple choice response time (CRT) task and a one-back response time (BRT) task. Three-level multilevel models were employed to simultaneously examine change in RTI for both CRT and BRT across weeks within years, as well as across years, in order to dissociate within-individual retest effects (short-term) from developmental (long-term) change slopes. Individual slopes were then extracted and utilized in a series of multinomial logistic regression equations to contrast short- vs. long-term RTI change as predictors of cognitive status. Results: Separately parameterizing short- and long-term change estimates yielded distinct patterns of variation. CRT RTI remained stable across short-term weekly assessments, while significantly increasing across years. In contrast, BRT RTI decreased significantly across short-term assessments but showed no change across long-term assessments. After dissociating change estimates, short-term BRT as well as long-term CRT and BRT estimates predicted cognitive status at long-term follow-ups; increases in RTI, suggesting either an inability to benefit from retest or process-based developmental decline, were associated with an increased likelihood of being classified as CIND. Conclusions: We showcase an innovative approach to dissociate retest effects from developmental change across and within individuals. Accurately parameterizing these distinct change estimates can both reduce systematic bias in longitudinal trend estimates as well as provide a clinically useful tool by utilizing retest effects to predict cognitive health and impairment.

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BACKGROUND: Practice effects (PEs) are improvements in performance after repeated exposure to test materials, and typically viewed as a source of bias in repeated cognitive assessments. We aimed to determine whether characterizing PEs could also provide a useful marker of early cognitive decline. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of the literature, searching PsycInfo (Ebsco) and PubMed databases for articles studying PEs in aging and dementia populations. Articles published between 1920 and 2019 were included. RESULT: We identified 259 articles, of which 27 studied PEs as markers of cognitive performance. These studies consistently showed that smaller, less-robust PEs were associated with current diagnostic status and/or future cognitive decline. In addition, lower PEs were associated with Alzheimer's disease risk factors and neurodegeneration biomarkers. CONCLUSION: PEs provide a potentially useful marker of cognitive decline, and could prove valuable as part of a cost-effective strategy to select individuals who are at-risk for dementia for future interventions.

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Executive functions (EFs) comprise the updating, shifting and inhibition dimensions. According to the Unity and Diversity Model, the inhibition dimension is fully accounted for by a general EFs factor. This suggests that training of inhibition should transfer, in part, to updating and shifting. Therefore, we tested the effectiveness of a three-week inhibition training (high-conflict Stroop task) and explored near transfer effects to an untrained inhibition task (antisaccade task) and far transfer effects to untrained tasks demanding task-set shifting (number-letter-task), working memory updating (n-back task) and planning abilities (Stockings of Cambridge task). We employed a randomized pretest/treatment/posttest study design in n = 102 healthy young adults, assigned to an intensive Stroop training (n = 38), an active control condition (n = 34) or no training intervention (n = 30). In the Stroop training group, Stroop performance improved with practice, while performance in the active control group remained unchanged. The Stroop training group showed improvements in overall Stroop task performance from pretest to posttest, but we observed neither near nor far transfer effects. Additionally, specifically stronger gains on incongruent Stroop trials compared to congruent trials were observed in the Stroop training group when color bar trials were excluded from the pretest-posttest-analysis. Generally, there were substantial improvements from pretest to posttest independent of training condition in all transfer tasks. In sum, our data do not support the existence of transfer effects from inhibition training in healthy young adults.

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OBJECTIVE: Investigate time-related age differences in cognitive functioning without influences of prior test experience. METHODS: Cognitive scores were compared in different individuals from the same birth years who were tested in different years, when they were at different ages. These types of quasi-longitudinal comparisons were carried out on data from three large projects: the Seattle Longitudinal Study [Schaie, K. W. (2013). Developmental influences on adult intelligence: The Seattle Longitudinal Study (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press], the Betula Project [Ronnlund, M., & Nilsson, L-G. (2008). The magnitude, generality, and determinants of Flynn effects on forms of declarative memory and visuospatial ability: Time-sequential analyses of data from a Swedish cohort study. Intelligence, 36, 192-209], and the Virginia Cognitive Aging Project (this study). RESULTS: In each data set, the results revealed that the estimates of cognitive change with no prior test experience closely resembled the estimates of age relations based on cross-sectional comparisons. Furthermore, longitudinal comparisons revealed positive changes at young ages that gradually became more negative with increased age, whereas all of the estimates of change without prior test experience were negative except those for measures of vocabulary. DISCUSSION: The current results suggest that retest effects can distort the mean age trends in longitudinal comparisons that are not adjusted for experience. Furthermore, the findings can be considered robust because the patterns were similar across three data sets involving different samples of participants and cognitive tests, and across different methods of controlling experience effects in the new data set.

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