Abstract
I evaluated the usefulness of an automated, tablet-based variant of the well-known, Trail Making Test (TMT). For decades, TMT's original, paper-and-pencil version been widely used to identify neuropsychological dysfunction, particularly frontal lobe deficits. My tablet-based variant, which was an improved version of one introduced by Kuhlman et al. (2006) eliminated several extraneous factors inherent to the original TMT: individual differences in spatial memory and speed of visual search. In addition, I also improved on Kuhlman et al. (2006) by captured important data that they had neglected. In addition to testing 27 college students with the new tablet-based variant of TMT, I explored how auditory distraction might affect performance, which could give insight into the role of executive function in multi-modal cognitive processing. Four types of auditory stimulus were presented along with the visual stimuli, which are congruent condition (sound matched to the current target), control condition (a beep sound), N-1 condition (sound were previous target), and random condition (sound were randomly selected from target sequence). Subject's executive function was assessed through a series of cognitive tests that measured working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory ability. The tablet variant of TMT required subjects to follow items from sequences of numbers and/or letters. Responses were made by touching the item on the tablet screen. The accuracy, reaction time, and location of each individual response were recorded for off-line analysis. My results showed that when subjects had switch between sequences, for example, between numbers and letters by following the sequence of "1 - A - 2 - B - 3 - C ..." they were slower and made more errors than when they could remain within just one sequence. However, subjects did not show more errors and slower response time in neither switching condition nor non-switching condition. My results showed no overall effect of auditory stimuli on visual sequence tracking. However, I found that when auditory stimulus is congruent with the task target, it facilitated subject's task performance, comparing to the auditory stimulus is neutral or incongruent with the target. Finally, a standard working memory measure was a good predictor of subjects task-switching performance.