INTRODUCTION
Cancellation tests have a long history in neuropsychological
assessment. Most commonly, they are administered as
paper-and-pencil tests that are normally used to assess
a person’s ability to visually search for an identifiable
target and to either cancel or circle all such target items
in an array. They vary widely in their complexity from
long letter strings, such as the “H” Test[1] and “A” Test[2] or
number strings like the “2 and 7 Cancellation” Test.[3] They
may include symbols that are quite simple as in the “Star
Cancellation,”[4] Teddy Bear Cancellation,[5] and Symbol
Cancellation tests.[6]
However, they have also been utilized in neuropsychological
test batteries for the assessment of the effectiveness of
treatment for adult patients with anorexia nervosa and
bulimia nervosa,[7] and for the assessment of illiterate
individuals to determine if education affected performance
in a neuropsychological battery.[8] They have also been
employed to assess cognitive impairments in alcoholic
cirrhotic patients,[9] and to evaluate target detection
deficits in patients who have undergone frontal lobectomy
surgery.[10]
An individual's performance on cancellation tests often
depends on their vigilance, motivation, and arousal
as they visually scan the array and select appropriate
responses while suppressing inappropriate ones.[10]
These tasks are assigned as measures of the capacity for
sustained attention, concentration, visual scanning, and
rapid response activation and inhibition.[11] For others,
they are measures of efficiency and speed of visual
scanning,[12] or selective attention.[13,14] For yet others, they
are administered primarily to assess potential hemispatial
inattention and visual neglect,[15,16] or motor perseverative
behaviour.[17] A recent study on the symbol cancellation
test provides a measure of neglect, the organizational
process, and attention.[18] Hence, the main objective of the
present study was to derive normative data for the newly
developed letter cancellation test.[19]
