Speeded Tests

Speeded Tests for Measuring Basic Cognitive Abilities

Speeded tests are often used to measure basic cognitive skills such as processing speed, reaction time, or visual search. Two examples of this are the symbol search test and the coding test of the Weschler Intelligence Scales (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale for adults and Intelligence Scale for Children for children). In the symbol search test, a visual pattern (or symbol) is provided as a reference. The test taker must search for exact copies of this symbol within a large set of similar symbols. The score is computed as the number of exact copies found when the time limit is reached. In the coding test, the examinee is provided with an arbitrary coding key pairing symbols and numbers. Then, a set of symbols is shown, and the examinee must translate them into the correct numbers, according to the coding key. The score is computed as the number of digits correctly decoded when the time limit is reached. Although these two tests are designed to measure speed of visual processing, most authors agree that they also tap other mental skills such as short-term memory and paired associates learning.

Speeded Tests for Measuring High-Level Cognitive Abilities

Despite speeded tests often being used for assessing basic mental skills such as processing speed, some speeded tests have been proposed for a quick evaluation of higher level complex mental abilities. One example of this is the Baddeley’s three-minute reasoning test, created for efficiently measuring verbal intelligence in research contexts. Another example is the Wonderlic personnel test (WPT) widely used in the organizational field in the United States for a quick estimation of general intelligence.

The Baddeley’s three-minute reasoning test is composed of a long list of sentences like that shown in Table 1:

All the items are easy enough to be correctly answered by any competent English reader, although some sentences are more complex than others. The score of the test is computed as the number of questions correctly answered in 3 minutes. Despite its simplicity, Alan D. Baddeley found a correlation of 0.59 between the scores of this test and the scores of the British Army verbal intelligence test, which takes around 1 hour to be completed. Based on these data, some authors hold that this test can provide an efficient and nondetailed estimation of general verbal ability.

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