Anxiety and trail making test scores in a sample of cocaine abusers

Anxiety effects on the Trail Making test (TMT), a test often used for screening for cognitive impairments, were examined in a sample of cocaine abusers in drug abuse treatment programs. A mixed race sample of 4306 subjects was drawn from electronic files of data from the Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS). The DATOS was a naturalistic, prospective cohort study that collected data from 1991-1993 in 96 programs in 11 cities in the United States. Data were analyzed to determine the effects of anxiety on the TMT scores A and B, and also derived indices created by adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing parts A and B of the TMT in this large treatment sample of cocaine abusers. The variables of sex, age, ethnicity, and education were included in analyses to control for demographic effects. The ratio derived score was the least sensitive TMT score to the effects of anxiety, but all TMT R-squares were quite small.