Behavioral Measures of Neurotoxicity (1990) / Chapter Skim
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The Current Status of Test Development in Neurobehavioral Toxicology
The Current Status of Test Development in Neurobehavioral Toxicology
Pages 56-68
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From page 56... ...
. Political forces no doubt play a large part in these differences, but the fact remains that evidence from neurobehavioral tests is simply not convincing to many decision makers in the latter countries.
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From page 57... ...
A number of workers have reviewed the study design problem for neurobehavioral toxicology (Gamberale, 1985; Valciukas and Lilis, 1980~. Virtually all studies in this area are cross sectional, in which exposed workers are compared to nonexposed workers on their performance of a battery of neurobehavioral tests.
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From page 58... ...
3. Each test corresponds roughly to a particular psychological function, e.g., including the Santa Ana test for motor functions, the Digit Symbol test for attention, and Digit Span test for memory functions.
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From page 59... ...
Although the rationale for test selection was not much different from that used in many other studies, this initiative constitutes a significant leap forward because it is an attempt to set up norms for each test that are applicable to comparisons between and within cultural boundaries. It is argued that by applying the test battery in a range of countries it should be possible to estimate the influence of cultural differences on test performance.
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From page 60... ...
state that this debate is sufficient to make unwarranted any inferences about the intactness of underlying cognitive processes on the bases of performance on the memory scanning task. Rather than choosing particular tests that have well-developed theoretical structures, two research groups have employed theorybased test batteries.
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From page 61... ...
Another difficulty with designing a battery without some global structure is that interpretation of test results can be made only for single tests. For example, a typical study of the effects of lead exposure in which the battery included tests of a range of neurobehavioral functions may have found impairments in reaction time, learning, and memory functions in lead workers, compared to nonexposed controls, but no apparent impairment of other functions.
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From page 62... ...
A test battery designed around an information-processing model, for example, will provide a proper screening tool that reduces the possibility of Type 1 errors occurring simply because the affected function was not tested adequately or at all. As Wickens (1987)
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From page 63... ...
A likely offshoot of improvements in the validity, reliability, and sensitivity of test batteries, as well as the significant efforts currently being made toward setting up norms for neurobehavioral tests (e.g., the WHO/NIOSH test program) , is that tests will become much more useful as clinical tools for diagnosing individual responses to toxic substances.
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From page 64... ...
Last, an important area for investigation in test development is in designing tests that will examine the strength of adaptive capacities to overcome the effects of toxic insult to the nervous system. This is an extremely important question because there are strong possibilities that "behavior's global nature also may allow compensatory mechanisms to thwart the early detection of an irreversible pathological process" (Weiss, 1983~.
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From page 65... ...
argue very strongly that the present status of psychological theory is too weak to be useful in neurobehavioral toxicology. They maintain that the theories have not been tested adequately for each type of validity or for reliability and, furthermore, that such testing needs to be carried out in the field, on populations similar to those that are likely to be exposed to toxic hazards, not just on healthy college students.
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From page 66... ...
~ RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT One of the major problems in neurobehavioral toxicology is design~ng studies which eliminate, or at least minimize, the effects of extraneous variables that confound any demonstration of impairment in exposed compared to nonexposect workers. The use of prospective or cohort designs, which is the most satisfactory solution to this problem, has implications for the development of test batteries.
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From page 67... ...
1979. Behavioural Test Battery for Toxicopsychological Studies: Used at the Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki, second revised edition.
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From page 68... ...
1955. Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.
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