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Description
An attention paradigm that has evolved into a class of neuropsychological tests used to assess sustained attention. There is not a single continuous performance test (CPT), as a number of commercially available and research CPT tasks exist and have been published in the neuropsychological literature. The common characteristic of all CPT tests is that they involve sequential presentation of stimuli, usually letters or numbers, over an extended period of time. The task demand is to attend and respond to particular target stimuli, while ignoring other stimuli that serve as nontarget distractors.
Historical Background
Early efforts by psychologists to assess attention in the context of intellectual or other cognitive testing typically relied on tests such as digit span, which provided a useful measure of attentional focus and span, but did not address other important elements of attention, such as the patients’ ability to selectively attend to information or to...
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References and Readings
Brickenkamp, R. Z. E. (1992). The d2 test of attention. Seattle: Hogrefe & Huber.
Cohen, R. A. (2014). Neuropsychology of attention (2nd ed). New York: Springer.Â
Cohen, R., Lohr, I., Paul, R., & Boland, R. (2001). Impairments of attention and effort among patients with major affective disorders. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 13(3), 385–395.
Conners, C. K., Epstein, J. N., Angold, A., & Klaric, J. (2003). Continuous performance test performance in a normative epidemiological sample. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 31(5), 555–562.
Epstein, J. N., Erkanli, A., Conners, C. K., Klaric, J., Costello, J. E., & Angold, A. (2003). Relations between continuous performance test performance measures and ADHD behaviors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 31(5), 543–554.
Gunstad, J., Cohen, R. A., Paul, R. H., & Gordon, E. (2006). Dissociation of the component processes of attention in healthy adults. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 21(7), 645–650.
Jerskey, B., Cohen, R. A., Jefferson, A. L., Hoth, K. F., Haley, A. P., Gunstad, J. J., et al. (2009). Sustained attention is associated with left ventricular ejection fraction in older adults with heart disease. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 15(1), 137–141.
Leark, R. A., Greenberg, L. K., Kindschi, C. L., Dupuy, T. R., & Hughes, S. J. (2007). Test of variables of attention: Clinical manual. Los Alamitos: The TOVA Company.
Nuechterlein, K. H. (1983). Signal detection in vigilance tasks and behavioral attributes among offspring of schizophrenic mothers and among hyperactive children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 92(1), 4–28.
Rosvold, H. E., Mirsky, A. F., Sarason, I., Bransome Jr., E. D., & Beck, L. H. (1956). A continuous performance test of brain damage. Journal of Consulting Psychiatry, 20, 343–350.
VIGIL. (1990). A continuous performance test. New Hampshire: Forethought.
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Cohen, R. (2016). Continuous Performance Tests. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1280-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_1280-2
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