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Compromised Motor Dexterity Confounds Processing Speed Task Outcomes in Stroke Patients
Essie Low1,2, Sheila Gillard Crewther1,2, Ben Ong2
1Department of Neurology, Sunshine Hospital, Western Health, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Frontiers in Neurology
|October 7, 2017
Summary
Conventional cognitive speed tests can be influenced by motor impairments. This study found that tasks with higher motor demands, like the Coding subtest, primarily measure motor speed in individuals with reduced hand dexterity, not cognitive speed.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Rehabilitation Medicine
Background:
- Conventional information processing speed assessments often necessitate motor responses.
- Motor impairments, common in aging and brain injury, can significantly confound these measures.
- The influence of motor demands on cognitive speed assessments is not always clinically addressed.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if common processing speed measures with varying motor demands assess motor speed rather than cognitive speed.
- To evaluate the impact of reduced hand dexterity on performance in visuo-motor reaction time, Symbol Search, and Coding tasks.
- To determine the relative contributions of cognitive and motor speed to performance on these tasks.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 29 patients with reduced dominant hand dexterity (stroke/transient ischemic attack) and 29 controls.
- Administered three processing speed tasks with differing motor demands: Visuo-Motor Reaction Time, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV Symbol Search, and Coding.
- Correlated cognitive speed (Inspection Time) and motor speed (Pegboard task) indices with the three primary tasks, using hierarchical regressions.
Main Results:
- Speed outcomes on tasks with high motor demands, such as Coding, significantly reflected motor speed in patients with reduced dexterity.
- Hierarchical regressions indicated that motor speed indices were substantial predictors of performance on motor-intensive tasks.
- Cognitive speed measures showed less influence on tasks with higher motor components.
Conclusions:
- Processing speed measures with substantial motor requirements may overestimate cognitive deficits in individuals with motor impairments.
- Clinical assessments of cognitive speed should prioritize tasks with minimal motor demands, especially when evaluating cognitive function post-brain injury or in aging populations.
- Future research should focus on developing and validating motor-free measures of cognitive processing speed for accurate clinical application.
