Multi-target visual search organisation across the lifespan: Cancellation task performance in a large and demographically stratified sample of healthy adults

Highlights

• - Cancellation tasks are useful clinical tools that probe many cognitive modules

• - We used cancellation tests on 523 participants of different ages, sex, and education

• - We provide cancellation task norm scores for indices computed from a big sample

• - Cancellation indices include attention bias, processing speed and search organisation

• - About a quarter of the healthy population shows relatively disorganised search

Abstract It is important that accurate tests exist to assess cognition in various groups of individuals. One popular test of attention and executive functioning is the cancellation task, in which participants perform multi-target visual search to find and ‘cancel’ targets among distractors. Although cancellation tasks have been used extensively with neurological patients, it is only partly clear whether performance is affected by demographic variables such as age and education, which can vary wildly among patients. Here, we describe performance in a sample of 523 healthy participants who participated in a web-based cancellation task. Specifically, we examined indices of spatial bias, processing speed, perseveration and revisiting behaviour, and search organisation. In this sample, age, sex, and level of education did not affect cancellation performance. A cluster analysis identified four cognitive profiles: Participants who make many omissions (N=18), who make many revisits (N=18), who have relatively poor search organisation (N=125), and who have relatively good search organisation (N=362). We advise neurologists and neuropsychologists to exercise caution when interpreting scores pertaining to search organisation in patients: Given the large proportion of healthy individuals with poor search organisation, disorganised search in patients might be pre-existing rather than disorder-related. Finally, we include norm scores for indices of spatial bias, perseverations and revisits, processing speed, and search organisation for a popular cancellation task.