11 July 2019 - - US-based Savonix, a specialist in digital tests for cognitive health, has published a research paper in the peer-reviewed medical journal Cognition, Brain, Behavior, the company said.
The article, titled: "The impact of lures on a mobile digitized n-back," outlines a new digitized version of the n-back test, a routinely used instrument in neurocognitive research, as a cognitive tool to evaluate for the effects of lures in a 2-back task.
The research study had 1314 participants, ranging from 15 to 76 years of age, who agreed to participate and were part of a larger validation study.
This study evaluated whether there was an added cognitive cost that a lure would elicit and assumed it would adversely affect performance.
The results indicated that the occurrence of a lure seemed to have a facilitatory effect in terms of faster response time to targets when a lure was present.
Because a 2-back task can be cognitively challenging, the researchers also had expected that over the course of the 60-trial test that subjects would exhibit cognitive fatigue as manifested by slower response time and decreased accuracy.
Instead, the study found that subjects' performance improved in both response time and accuracy over the course of the test whether lures were present or not.
Additionally, the study postulated that the modality and paradigm used in n-back studies may be considered as significant factors when comparing different studies.
Savonix offers a mobile assessment of cognitive function available on Android and iOS for phone and tablet, the Savonix Cognitive Assessment platform is an accurate, accessible and affordable tool for professional cognitive screens.
It empowers healthcare providers, payers and researchers to evaluate and leverage results to improve health and treatment outcomes. Led by clinical neuropsychologists and digital health technology experts, the company has established itself as an authority on cognition globally.