The Development and Psychometric Properties of the Visuospatial Working Memory Assessment (VWMA) for Children.
Thitiya Wangkawan, Cynthia Lai, Peeraya Munkhetvit and 2 others
PMID 32292306WHAT IT FOUND
A new visuospatial working memory test for children was rated as relevant by experts and gave stable scores when repeated, but it separated children with ADHD from other children on some tasks and not all.
Key findings
01The five expert raters gave the assessment an overall item-objective congruence value of 1.0.
02The computerized test had an internal consistency value of .88 across 18 items, and the tabletop test had .81 across 18 items.
03Compared with the control group, children with ADHD differed significantly on some computerized tasks except the N-back task, and on overall tabletop tasks.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The sample came from purposive sampling at a school and included only children with average intelligence, so the results may not apply to children with lower cognitive ability or other settings. The study included 60 normal children and 30 children with ADHD, which is small for establishing how well a new assessment works. The construct validity results are hard to interpret because the paper reports p values of .06 and .20, then describes significant differences, and the Discussion also says children with ADHD showed the same visuospatial working memory ability as controls. The exact test-retest reliability values are not shown in the supplied text, so a reader cannot see the numerical stability of scores.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the VWMA as a validated ADHD diagnostic test. The study tested a new assessment, and the group differences were not consistent across tasks, with the computerized N-back task not showing a significant difference.