Effects of prior testing lasting a full year in NCANDA adolescents: Contributions from age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, site, family history of alcohol or drug abuse, and baseline performance.

摘要: Longitudinal study provides a robust method for tracking developmental trajectories. Yet inherent problems of retesting pose challenges in distinguishing biological change from prior testing experience. We examined factors potentially influencing scores on 16 neuropsychological test composites over 1year 568 adolescents the National Consortium Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment Adolescence (NCANDA) project. The twice-minus-once-tested revealed that performance gain was mainly attributable to experience (practice) with little contribution predicted effects. Group mean practice slopes 13 indicated 60% ∼100% variance experience; General Ability accuracy showed least effect (29%). Lower baseline performance, especially younger participants, strong predictor greater gain. Contributions age, sex, ethnicity, examination site, socioeconomic status, or family history alcohol/substance abuse were nil small, even where statistically significant. Recognizing substantial proportion longitudinal testing, 1-year, is indicates caution against assuming observed during periods maturation necessarily reflects development. Estimates experience, form learning, may be relevant metric detecting interim influences, such as alcohol use traumatic episodes, behavior.