CogniTOT

CogniTOT™

Author

Professor Deirdre Murray

Introduction

CogniTOT™ is a new way of assessing cognitive function in young children. Developed through a decade of research in the Infant Maternal and Child Research Centre (www.infantcentre.ie) in University College Cork; through careful testing and development in over 1000 children in 12 different countries.

CogniTOT™ is a tablet based assessment where children work through 30 different tasks designed to be fun and age appropriate.

It is suitable for children aged 22 to 30 months (2 and a half years old). The main advantage is that it is completely language free. No instructions are required. The child figures out what to do guided simply by sounds and shapes. So it can be used to assess children who you might not usually be able to assess: non–english speaking families or the child with social or language delays including autism.

The instructor can give visual demonstration, but no instructions are given. Even children who have never used a tablet device before quickly learn how to complete the tasks based on stars and shapes.

CogniTOT™ takes approximately 15–20 minutes to complete, so is ideal for screening in busy clinics. The report is produced automatically by the software, so you have no calculations to do. Exact reaction times, number of errors and successful task completion are all tracked and used to give a cognitive profile of the child. This is immediately available in your database. All the raw data and also the calculated scores are available: including scores for processing speed, selective attention, acquired learning, working memory and sustained attention.

CogniTOT has been proven to have excellent internal validity and good concurrent validity with the Bayley’s Scales of Infant Development (Version III). No additional testing kit or report forms are needed; just a standard android tablet of iPad. All training materials and instructions are available online. Training is straight forward; download the software from Apple iStore or Google Play store and you are ready to start testing!

CogniTOT was designed to be used by:

Clinical Psychologists
Research Psychologists
Pediatricians
Researchers in the Field of early childhood development

SCORING

CogniTOT assessment gives details of performance on 30 tasks. Resulting in 8 separate scores (1 overall score of cognition and 7 individual construct scores), scoring is provided as percentile scores for individual domains.

COGNITIVE SCORE (1)

COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT SCORES (7)

1. Processing Speed

2. Selective Attention

3. Working Memory

4. Acquired Learning

5. Problem Solving

6. Cognitive Shift

7. Sustained Attention

Features

Fun 20 minute assessments
Focused entirely on the executive functions of the child
Scoring is independent of the administrator
Automated cognitive profiling
Improved inter rater reliability
Provides robust and targeted assessments
Assess toddler’s fundamental cognitive abilities and individual cognitive domains

Benefits

Clinically Validated
Eradicates that reliance of the child’s language ability to perform executive functions, by providing non–verbal assessments
Can be used by a multitude of nationalities where the English language may not be the child’s mother tongue