Executive Functioning and Verbal Memory test

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crouton
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19 May 2011, 7:39 am

Verbal Memory: 66th percentile
Executive Functioning: 77th percentile



OJani
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19 May 2011, 7:52 am

NarcissusSavage wrote:
(...)It was fun, I spose. But highly illogical in the presumtions it makes. The verbal portion was not...um, verbal. I would have failed it miserably if I had to remember spoken words. Not to mention the delay is very very brief. And the EF portion does not contain shifting rules or varied conditions really, it's rule set is given to you before you even begin.

And ... the Silk Stalking on the Lamb with a Nest on it's back standing next to a Parent cooking a Turkey with a Face and a Hand the Color of Weather raining Nails on the Shield of a Mouse in a House on a Hill. It's a really bizarre mental image, but yes...."word to image" convertion is natural and instant. So it was easy to recognize a word, I've either seen it in this image or it's unfamiliar to this image. I think in non-language based thoughts and images, not words. Thinking in words is mentally taxing, but doable....not natural, and inefficient.

I think you have a point here. In case I can't build a picture, a concept, or at least an association to a word quickly, I fail miserably. A good long time verbal memory would require to preserve random words, phrases. I know I'm not doing this well. I seem to have similar difficulties with names, faces.

It might be interesting for foreign language learners, that as far as simple words are used in the test, it may have the opposite effect on the result to what would be expected at first sight. Simply because the mind is set on better focus naturally when interpreting a non-native language.



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19 May 2011, 8:06 am

58th percentile on the verbal memory test and 8th percentile on executive functioning. This is not surprising as I often get "tunnel vision" focusing on a task and have difficulty refocusing on something else. I often get irritated when I get interrupted at an important point. Sometimes if I'm near the end of a task and get interrupted I forget to finish the first task and move on to something else. This has caused all sorts of difficulties with the working world as there are few jobs that require minimal social interaction and involve concentrating on a single task for long periods of time. Further, I found myself getting very irritated and having to sort of restart my thinking because I got confused and just couldn't process for a second or two till I slowed down and reread the rule, sort of like I had to clear everything out of my mind and look at the question again as a new question.

I was a bit surprised by the verbal memory score. I used to do better at tests like this. It's probably partly due to the fact that these were just words with no context or meaning, so I'm basically just memorizing patterns of letters on a screen. To me, it wouldn't matter particularly that it's a word or not. You could put patterns of letters in random locations on the screen, upside down, w/e, and my result would be similar. I memorize pictures not words. The memory tests I took as a child always included some definition or sentence with the word. The more detail and depth there is to something, and the more relevant and interesting the information the easier it is to memorize. This measures what I like to call "pure" memory, whereas most of my memory is now more based on keeping track of things that are actually useful to me, so perhaps with age we direct our pure talents into more specialized functions.


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Rhiannon0828
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19 May 2011, 8:17 am

verbal memory: 79th percentile
executive functioning: 10th percentile
I thought I'd do better on the verbal memory, but the executive functioning was no surprise. The flashing colors really messed with me, too.

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55 NT



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19 May 2011, 1:39 pm

Verbal memory 34 percentile, average
Executive functioning 12 percentile, low average


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Tritone
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19 May 2011, 4:29 pm

I should say that I did the first bit of the test, went away for about 2 hours, then did the rest so the verbal memory bit should probably be higher.

Verbal: 111 - 77th percentile
Exec.: 94 - 34th percentile



Pandora_Box
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19 May 2011, 4:42 pm

Verbal Memory:

Percentile 61 <---originally I was looking at something different, rofl

Average

Executive Function:

1 percentile

Very low

-----------

And here I thought I didn't have any executive function issues.



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19 May 2011, 8:21 pm

I'm tired and have no idea how you guys score this when you say 3rd percentile etc so:

Verbal Memory: 56, 111, 77 - Above average
Exe Fun..; 47, 94, 34 - Average

In the executive functioning test i sometimes impulsively pressed the wrong button. "Press left! NOOO... damn body"



Verdandi
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19 May 2011, 8:37 pm

Impulsiveness and impulse control are affected by executive function.

That part of the test is similar to but much shorter than another test they do while checking for ADHD. It's two 10-minute tests, one to test attention, one to test impulsiveness.



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19 May 2011, 8:45 pm

When i was being tested for ADHD i had to sit on a computer for 15minutes hitting the space bar everytime a letter flashed on the screen. I was told to not press space when the letter X appeared. It was very difficult for me not to press space once it came. I was told however that people who do not have adhd also struggled to skip the X'es.



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19 May 2011, 8:48 pm

I was googling autism and executive functioning and came across an interesting research paper that was evaluating the diagnostic suitability of various executive functioning tests in help evaluating autism/aspergers (at http://www.iapsych.com/articles/hill2006.pdf). Here's the important conclusion:

Quote:
Overall, there were no differences between
those with and without AS on all ‘classical’ tests of executive function, once difficulties in psychomotor processing and
visual search had been accounted for (cf. group difference on
trails A and B). However, surprisingly large differences were
found on other, newer tests of executive function, in particular on the Six Elements task of the BADS and on the Hayling
test. These tests were sensitive not only at a group level but also
on a case-by-case basis and they correlated with measures of
autistic behaviour


So, it looks like the Six Elements task of the BADS and on the Hayling
test are *the* tests to take for evaluating executive functioning for evaluating the likelihood of possessing autism. I wonder what those tests are like (I wonder if they're similar to this one?)?

From the paper:

Quote:
Six Elements test. Planning, organisation and monitoring of behaviour are
tested using this multi-component task. Participants must carry out six separate tasks (two dictation, two arithmetic and two picture-naming tasks), within
10 min, whilst obeying a simple rule (do not carry out two of the same tasks
consecutively). Whilst participants are not expected to complete each task,
they must carry out at least part of all six. It is not important how well the
participant performs the individual component tasks. Performance is measured as the number of tasks attempted, the number of rule breaks, and the
maximum time spent on any individual subtask.

1.1.1.2. Hayling test (Burgess & Shallice, 1997). Response initiation and suppression are measured by this test which comprises two parts. In the first part, 15
incomplete sentences are read aloud and must be completed by a word that makes
the sentence meaningful (e.g. ‘he posted the letter without a . . . stamp’). In the
second part, 15 further sentences are presented which have to be completed by
a word that does not fit into the context of the sentence (e.g. ‘the captain wanted
to stay with the sinking . . . toaster’). Four scores were of interest—time taken
part one (response initiation), time taken part two, errors part two (response
suppression, strategy formation) and overall efficiency score.


Hmmm... I wonder how I could get a hold of these tests? Or, possibly, if I learn a sufficiently great amount of information about these tests, I might be able to create an online clone and we could then norm that on AS and NT individuals and then the internet will then have one, or two, more tests available for the purposes of effectively diagnosing the likelihood of having autism! Oh gee, the possibility excites me.

Btw, I posted an "NT thread" for score comparison at http://personalitycafe.com/cognitive-fu ... t-t-f.html . It turns out 2 out of the 3 NTs, so far, are in the average range while the last guy (At this point in time) did "really really badly" on the switching attention part (He didn't want to divulge an exact number.). So, even though the number of tested NTs are small at this point, it appears there's a definite difference between the "normal"/"low score" ratio between NTs and "official AS individuals" on the switching attention task, suggesting that an executive functioning test would be useful for diagnosing autism/aspergers. I'm not sure how good this particular test is compared to other executive functioning tests out there.



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19 May 2011, 9:37 pm

I'm really interested to understand the correlation between Exec Dysfunction and AS.
Taking this test only piqued my interest further, being that there was such a wide discrepancy between my two scores, and there seems to be a clear pattern of low executive functioning amongst people here.

If I pay attention to it, I can feel the lag in processing that occurs with specific tasks or environments. This test was a fantastic example of that.


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Kon
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19 May 2011, 9:37 pm

Can anybody hypothesize what extremely low verbal memory scores and high executive function scores imply?



Acacia
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19 May 2011, 9:43 pm

Kon wrote:
Can anybody hypothesize what extremely low verbal memory scores and high executive function scores imply?
being a calculator? :lol:
I would guess: poor or impaired short-term memory, due to... injury, drug use, or plain genetics. Something like that...


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19 May 2011, 9:57 pm

Acacia wrote:
Kon wrote:
Can anybody hypothesize what extremely low verbal memory scores and high executive function scores imply?
being a calculator? :lol:
I would guess: poor or impaired short-term memory, due to... injury, drug use, or plain genetics. Something like that...


I was going to guess poor verbal working memory, as you need verbal working memory to properly encode the words into longer-term memory storage ("Short term" memory supposedly lasts for 2-5 seconds or some such.), whereas, the other parts of executive functioning are spared.

However, I'd suspect if you tried the test 4 times, and your scores varied from the 2nd percentile to the 97th percentile, that's what we call the practice affect. :wink: To minimize the practice affect, you should wait a month before taking the test again.

Btw, I'm still suspicious about the seeming group discrepancies in verbal memory between older and younger testers. It seems statistically significant enough to suspect that their age-related score adjustments might not be adjusted well enough.

I just culled the verbal scores for the "older testers" and here's what the results are:

Official AS (name - estimated_age; verbal_memory_score)
------------------------
wavefreak - 50; 1
verdandia - 40; 1
kon - 60; 1
apple_in_my_eye - 42; 1
raquiGirl - 38; 90

Unknown
--------------------------
ojani - 38; 32
Rhiannon0828 - 42; 79

It appears there's a definite group difference in verbal scores among the older "officially diagnosed" group as compared to younger testers who usually score between the 30-90 percentile. I suspect their score adjustments for older testers are off by quite a bit, unless there could be an explanation why there'd be a large percentage of older users on the board with lower scores. (Maybe the older aspies who are more verbally skilled are too busy in the "real world", whereas a lot of the younger people on the boards tend to be students so there's a more normal distribution among younger forum users? Or maybe older users tend to have a more severe form of aspergers than younger users?)



Kon
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19 May 2011, 10:24 pm

swbluto wrote:
I just culled the verbal scores for the "older testers" and here's what the results are:

Official AS (name - estimated_age; verbal_memory_score)
------------------------
wavefreak - 50; 1
verdandia - 40; 1
kon - 60; 1
apple_in_my_eye - 42; 1
raquiGirl - 38; 90

Unknown
--------------------------
ojani - 38; 32
Rhiannon0828 - 42; 79



Does anybody relate to these?

-have trouble paying attention to and remembering information presented orally, and may cope better with visually acquired information
-have problems carrying out multi-step directions given orally; need to hear only one direction at a time
-have poor listening skills
-need more time to process information
-disliking locations with background noise such as bar, clubs or other social locations
-a preference for written communication (e.g. text chat)
-having trouble paying attention and remembering information when information is simultaneously presented in multiple modalities

P.S. I'm still in my 40s. I wish I was in my 60s as I'm looking forward to retirement.