Adult norms and test-retest reliability for the Months Backward test: Durational and response accuracy measures

Abstract

The aim of this study was to present adult norms and to estimate the test-retest reliability for durational and response accuracy measures on the word sequence production test, Months Backward. A total of 216 neurologically intact adults (aged 18–88) stratified by sex, age, and education took the test at maximum speed. Errors and speech duration were recorded. A retest was conducted with 40 participants after 3 weeks. Altogether 94% of the participants completed the test without error. Errors were associated with slow performance. Duration was predicted by years of education (beta = −0.39) and self-reported dyslexia (beta = 0.19). The test-retest reliability was 0.82 for duration and 0.97 for errors. A regression formula for adjustment of logarithmically transformed duration scores is provided.

Key words::

• Aphasia
• attention
• cognition
• dyslexia
• testing

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Per Alm for helpful comments. Professor Graham Budd kindly reviewed the English of the manuscript.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.