Human cognitive neuroscience seminar

Speaker: Dr Sarah E. MacPherson

Topic: Impairment on the Cognitive Estimation Test: a specific frontal executive deficit?

Abstract: The Cognitive Estimation Test (CET; Shallice & Evans, 1978; MacPherson et al., 2014) is widely used in clinical and research settings as an off-the-shelf measure of executive function. The CET is thought to assess the ability to produce reasonable estimates to items that individuals would not know that the exact answer (e.g., “How fast do race horses run?”) and is thought to rely upon processes such as reasoning, the development and application of appropriate strategies and response plausibility checking, as well as general knowledge, numeracy etc. Given that there are different ways of successfully performing or indeed failing the CET, I will discuss my research that examines how individuals produce cognitive estimates and whether specific estimates might be better at identifying impaired estimation abilities, in an attempt to improve the quality and accuracy of the CET.