Usability Report on Cogstate’s Brief Battery
Louis Gurrieri
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Executive Summary
The Cogstate Brief Battery is a cognitive battery that is designed to assess aspects of working memory and processing speed. It is a computerised test comprised of tasks such as the Detection Task (DET), One Card Learning Task (OCL). All the tasks involve the use of playing cards as the stimuli for the tests, and by using cards it is easy to understand for most people, as normal playing cards aren’t specific to only one culture. Since the playing cards are an easy stimuli to understand, they can be used across many different cultures, and understood by people at nearly any age. As long as they can …show more content…
The first two tasks of the battery are scored by the milliseconds that it takes the person to answer, whereas the last two tests are scored on the amount of correct answers given by the participant.
The first task that is presented in the battery is a Detection Task. This task lasts for about 2 minutes, and measures psychomotor function and speed of processing. A lower score in a Detection Task is better, as when the score is low, that means its fast which means that participant has a higher speed of processing. The participants have to respond “yes” as soon as the card flips over.
The third task is a One Card Learning Task, this is to measure visual learning and memory and lasts for 5 minutes. The participants have to respond “yes” or “no” when the card comes up, “yes” if the card has come up before during the task and “no” if the card hasn’t come up before. This is scored by the amount of correct answers the participants given and therefore the higher the score, the …show more content…
Most of the instructions were clear and structured well and easy to understand and they were put simply. Although a problem I noticed throughout the whole time I was doing the tasks was that even though it stated at the beginning of the test that you would complete practices before the actual test, during the tasks, it got confusing as to whether it was a practice or the actual test.
The auditory and visual feedback during the actual tests was good yet inconsistent. Sometimes if I had made an error it would make an error sound, stop and not continue until I had answered correctly. Whereas other times it would just make the error sound but continue on. Although only a minor problem, it still made it a bit unclear if I had gotten it correct or not. The practice tests had better feedback then the actual tests, during the practice tests, they had ticks and congratulatory messages or encouraging messages as you went along so you knew if your answers were right or not.
As tested on
Louis Gurrieri
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Executive Summary
The Cogstate Brief Battery is a cognitive battery that is designed to assess aspects of working memory and processing speed. It is a computerised test comprised of tasks such as the Detection Task (DET), One Card Learning Task (OCL). All the tasks involve the use of playing cards as the stimuli for the tests, and by using cards it is easy to understand for most people, as normal playing cards aren’t specific to only one culture. Since the playing cards are an easy stimuli to understand, they can be used across many different cultures, and understood by people at nearly any age. As long as they can …show more content…
The first two tasks of the battery are scored by the milliseconds that it takes the person to answer, whereas the last two tests are scored on the amount of correct answers given by the participant.
The first task that is presented in the battery is a Detection Task. This task lasts for about 2 minutes, and measures psychomotor function and speed of processing. A lower score in a Detection Task is better, as when the score is low, that means its fast which means that participant has a higher speed of processing. The participants have to respond “yes” as soon as the card flips over.
The third task is a One Card Learning Task, this is to measure visual learning and memory and lasts for 5 minutes. The participants have to respond “yes” or “no” when the card comes up, “yes” if the card has come up before during the task and “no” if the card hasn’t come up before. This is scored by the amount of correct answers the participants given and therefore the higher the score, the …show more content…
Most of the instructions were clear and structured well and easy to understand and they were put simply. Although a problem I noticed throughout the whole time I was doing the tasks was that even though it stated at the beginning of the test that you would complete practices before the actual test, during the tasks, it got confusing as to whether it was a practice or the actual test.
The auditory and visual feedback during the actual tests was good yet inconsistent. Sometimes if I had made an error it would make an error sound, stop and not continue until I had answered correctly. Whereas other times it would just make the error sound but continue on. Although only a minor problem, it still made it a bit unclear if I had gotten it correct or not. The practice tests had better feedback then the actual tests, during the practice tests, they had ticks and congratulatory messages or encouraging messages as you went along so you knew if your answers were right or not.
As tested on