OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to develop auditory-verbal and visual-spatial memory tasks using smart devices for children aged 8 to 10 years and examine their validity. METHODS: One-hundred and fourteen school-aged children were recruited through internet advertising. We developed memory tasks assessing auditory-verbal memory, visual-spatial memory, and working memory, and then examined their construct validity by examining the developmental trend of the children's mean scores with age. In order to examine the concurrent validity of the tasks, we conducted correlation analyses between the children's scores on the newly developed auditory-verbal, visual-spatial memory and working memory tasks and their scores on well-known standardized tests of memory and working memory, including the auditory-verbal memory subtests of the Korean Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery for Children, Korean Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test, digit span and arithmetic subtest of Korean Educational Development Institute Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Revised, and Corsi block test. RESULTS: The memory and working memory scores measured by the newly developed tasks tended to increase with age. Further, there were significant correlations between the scores of the four cognitive tasks and the corresponding scores of the standardized assessment tools. CONCLUSION: This study revealed promising evidence for the validity of the memory tasks using smart devices, suggesting their utility for school-aged children in research and clinical settings.
Child* ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Internet ; Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery ; Memory* ; Memory, Short-Term

OBJECTIVES: This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of acute sleep deprivation of 36 hours on cognitive functions, and investigate which region of brain would dysfunction by sleep deprivation. METHODS: We carried out sleep deprivation in the 18 healthy and right handed males in their 20's. We also administered to them Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery and Calculation and Digit Span task of K-WAIS in order to examine cognitive functions before and after sleep deprivations. RESULTS: There were no differences in freedom from distractability, tactile function, visual function, reading, writing, calculation, and intellectual process function. However, motor function, rhythm, receptive speech, expressive speech, memory, and complex verbal arithmetic function decreased after sleep deprivation. In motor function, delayed speed and high fail rate in complex forms of praxis and selectivity of motor acts were observed. In area of receptive speech and expressive speech, understanding of logical and grammatical structure, spontaneous speech, sequencing and filling in items which are grammatically accurate decreased. All these functions related with dysfunction in right hemisphere anterior region. Also in localization scales, the fail rates of right frontal dysfunction scale and right temporal dysfunction scale increased after sleep deprivation. CONCLUSIONS: From these results, we suggest that sleep deprivation has negative effect on the cognitive functions. Especially, sleep deprivation might be associated with dysfunction of anterior region in right hemisphere or subcortical dysfunction.
Adult* ; Brain ; Freedom ; Hand ; Humans ; Logic ; Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery ; Male* ; Memory ; Sleep Deprivation* ; Weights and Measures ; Writing