IQs Corner: Practice effects persist over two decades of cognitive testing: Implications for longitudinal research - #practiceeffect #cognitive #neurocognit #IQ #intelligence #schoolpsychology #schoolpsychologists

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MedRxiv preprint available at.  https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.16.25329587

Elman et al. (2025)

ABSTRACT 

Background: Repeated cognitive testing can boost scores due to practice effects (PEs), yet it remains unclear whether PEs persist across multiple follow-ups and long durations. We examined PEs across  multiple assessments from midlife to old age in a nonclinical sample.   

Method: Men (N=1,608) in the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA) underwent 
neuropsychological assessment comprising 30 measures across 4 waves (~6-year testing intervals) spanning up to 20 years. We leveraged age-matched replacement participants to estimate PEs at each wave. We compared cognitive trajectories and MCI prevalence using unadjusted versus PE-adjusted scores. 

Results: Across follow-ups, a range of 7-12 tests (out of 30) demonstrated significant PEs, especially in episodic memory and visuospatial domains. Adjusting for PEs resulted in improved detection of cognitive decline and MCI, with up to 20% higher MCI prevalence.  

Conclusion: PEs persist across multiple assessments and decades underscoring the 
importance of accounting for PEs in longitudinal studies.

  
Keywords: practice effects; repeat testing; serial testing; longitudinal testing; mild cognitive impairment; cognitive change

Practice or retest effects in measures of working memory capacity (Gwm): A meta-analysis

Retest effects in working memory capacity tests: A meta-analysis
Jana Scharfen, Katrin Jansen, Heinz Holling. Article link

© Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2018

Abstract

The repeated administration of working memory capacity tests is common in clinical and research settings. For cognitive ability tests and different neuropsychological tests, meta-analyses have shown that they are prone to retest effects, which have to be accounted for when interpreting retest scores. Using a multilevel approach, this meta-analysis aims at showing the reproducibility of retest effects in working memory capacity tests for up to seven test administrations, and examines the impact of the length of the test-retest interval, test modality, equivalence of test forms and participant age on the size of retest effects. Furthermore, it is assessed whether the size of retest effects depends on the test paradigm. An extensive literature search revealed 234 effect sizes from 95 samples and 68 studies, in which healthy participants between 12 and 70 years repeatedly performed a working memory capacity test. Results yield a weighted average of g = 0.28 for retest effects from the first to the second test administration, and a significant increase in effect sizes was observed up to the fourth test administration. The length of the test-retest interval and publication year were found to moderate the size of retest effects. Retest effects differed between the paradigms of working memory capacity tests. These findings call for the development and use of appropriate experimental or statistical methods to address retest effects in working memory capacity tests.

Keywords Meta-analysis · Retest effect · Practice effect · Working memory



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Practice effects and progressive error practice effects on speeded tests

Journal of Intelligence

Response Time Reduction Due to Retesting in Mental Speed Tests: A Meta-Analysis (article link)

Jana Scharfen, Diego Blum and Heinz Holling


Abstract

As retest effects in cognitive ability tests have been investigated by various primary and meta-analytic studies, most studies from this area focus on score gains as a result of retesting. To the best of our knowledge, no meta-analytic study has been reported that provides sizable estimates of response time (RT) reductions due to retesting. This multilevel meta-analysis focuses on mental speed tasks, for which outcome measures often consist of RTs. The size of RT reduction due to retesting in mental speed tasks for up to four test administrations was analyzed based on 36 studies including 49 samples and 212 outcomes for a total sample size of 21,810. Significant RT reductions were found, which increased with the number of test administrations, without reaching a plateau. Larger RT reductions were observed in more complex mental speed tasks compared to simple ones, whereas age and test-retest interval mostly did not moderate the size of the effect. Although a high heterogeneity of effects exists, retest effects were shown to occur for mental speed tasks regarding RT outcomes and should thus be more thoroughly accounted for in applied and research settings.

Keywords: meta-analysis; mental speed; processing speed; retest effect; practice effect; response time; reaction time; automatization


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