A Formal Assessment Tool For Measuring Mental Ability: Description, Development, And Application In A Specific Population

Part 1: Search for Formal Assessment Tool

Mental ability or memory is the ability and the capability of the human brain to store and retain the knowledge that it acquires throughout the life’s journey. It is the capacity to remember things and also the power to possess mental qualities. It can also be explained as the ability to encode and decode the information, store the knowledge and use the information later on, by recalling or reminiscing. It has the ability to influence the present behavior of the human and thus there have been several tools that are used to measure this mental ability of a person. The following essay aims to discuss about the tools of its measurement, its description and its application in a specific population.:

Memory is often measured through several mental ability tests. However there also has been inventions in the use of tools, that can actually test the memory and mental ability in humans. As per the discussion of Blue (2016), one such instrument or assessment tool, had been developed by the famous psychologist Jamie Edgin in the University of Arizona. She had invented a measurement tool, which is a Android based, touch screen, having a battery of tests. This concept had been used by the Galatea Studios, an organization that develops applications and games. It gradually had gone to the market where it could be used by the population of test the mental ability and memory of people.

The mental ability tool had been designed by Jamie Edgin , when he got the idea from the toys of her kid and a kitchen tray (Blue, 2016). This concept had been transformed into an interactive game that would test the memory of persons. She had developed this concept after being frustrated with the mental ability tests that failed to work upon the young children, with intellectual disabilities. It has also been said by Oswald, et.al (2015), after receiving the grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, she had also received funds that would support her innovative technique from the LuMind Research Down Syndrome Foundation. The mental ability test game, in its digital version has the ability to measure the mental ability and the memory of the small children who are suffering from genetic impairment and who have intellectual disabilities. This test is effective as it has its application is various different mental ability fields such as in the domain of human memory, in the working memory of an individual along with the visual recognition and also it checks whether the children are able to receive a certain piece of information (Maehler & Schuchardt, 2016) . The greatest idea behind this design as the psychologist says is to utilize one single battery and bring together the design of on e battery in the value of the test so that it effectively woks to measure the mental capacity of these children, just with the help of a short testing session. The validation process of this Android game design would be during the first six months of the trial, since the inventor would receive feedbacks from the several scientists of medicine residing worldwide (Hill, et.al., 2015). There would be testing of this device with in person examination in the several universities and also those educational institutions who deal with these intellectually impaired students. Also there would be also feedbacks received from the scientists if memory, and intellectual impairment all across the globe, which would help this great discovery and invention receive its deserved validation.

Part 2: Tool Description, Development, and Validation

This kind of test is important since there have been several developments in the field of pharmaceuticals, and various innovations have been done to treat this cognitive impairment in these individuals who suffer from genetic disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome (Van der Molen, Henry & Van Luit, 2014). These pharmaceuticals actually have an ill effect upon the brain of these innocent kids since it targets straight away at the brain function and the memory system. Thus there is no such reliable source of measurement of the memory in these impaired kids.

According to Cornoldi, et.al (2014), the mental ability test tool that she has developed is aimed at measurement of memory of the children who belong to the age group of 3 to 6 years and also the children who range up to the age group of 18 years. These children who are  not fully developed or who lack the normalcy of the other typical children, often suffer from intellectual disabilities. This measurement tool is used for those children who suffer from the Down Syndrome or Fragile X syndrome (Blue, 2016). The children who have genetic disorders and who are the victims of genetic disabilities, they need to be cured since the common mental ability tests fail to do the same. As per her opinion, the mental ability tests in general are aimed at dealing with the population of children who are above the age group of 5 years. This assessment tool, actually deals with the children who are developing, and who are below 5 years of age. Also as per the discussion of Garcia, et.al (2014), many of the cognitive impaired children find it difficult to answer to the tests with verbal response. Thus this kind of test is supposed to help them, since after several experiments, the psychologist Jamie Edgin concluded that there had been impaired children who could not respond to the mental ability test when it had the version of a mere table top interactive game. They were more prone and respondent to the computerized environment and they could easily answer to the Android version or digital version of the game (Schneider, Schumann – Hengsteler & Sodian, 2014).

The only limitation that this mental ability tool and test has is that it does not target the people who belong to the aged population their mental ability should also be measured and this Android version of the interactive game could actually help the scientists to check on the memory of the old people, especially those suffering from Alzheimers (Salzer, et.al., 2014) This could be a great help to the scientists as it could also have helped in knowing more about the disease and how the brain functions when an old man tends to forget lose his memory in alzheimers. There could have been improved development in this mental ability tool. This could have proved beneficial for the other population and also for the children who belong to the diverse cultural group and linguistic group (Swanson & Zheng, 2014).

Part 3: Application in a Specific Population

Conclusion:

Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that it is very important to test and measure the memory of the individuals be it the young children or the old age population. Since there had been no proper justified tests which could measure the cognitive abilities of the developing children belonging to the age group of 3-5 years, suffering from the genetic disabilities, the psychologist Jamie Edgin had decided to invent one such test in the form of an interactive game. This concept had been given the shape of a digital Android game which actually could test the vision impairment, the memory status, the working memory as well as how much information can the mentally impaired children associate with. This had been a great tool for measurement of the mental ability which could give the world a whole new direction in the medical science.

References:

Blue, A. (2016). Psychologist Creates Tool for Measuring Memory. UANews. Retrieved 13 May 2020, from https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/psychologist-creates-tool-measuring-memory.

Cornoldi, C., Giofre, D., Orsini, A., & Pezzuti, L. (2014). Differences in the intellectual profile of children with intellectual vs. learning disability. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35(9), 2224-2230.

Garcia, R. B., Mammarella, I. C., Tripodi, D., & Cornoldi, C. (2014). Visuospatial working memory for locations, colours, and binding in typically developing children and in children with dyslexia and non?verbal learning disability. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 32(1), 17-33.

Hill, A. P., Van Santen, J., Gorman, K., Langhorst, B. H., & Fombonne, E. (2015). Memory in language-impaired children with and without autism. Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders, 7(1), 19.

Maehler, C., & Schuchardt, K. (2016). The importance of working memory for school achievement in primary school children with intellectual or learning disabilities. Research in developmental disabilities, 58, 1-8.

Oswald, F. L., McAbee, S. T., Redick, T. S., & Hambrick, D. Z. (2015). The development of a short domain-general measure of working memory capacity. Behavior research methods, 47(4), 1343-1355.

Salzer, M. S., Brusilovskiy, E., Prvu-Bettger, J., & Kottsieper, P. (2014). Measuring community participation of adults with psychiatric disabilities: Reliability of two modes of data collection. Rehabilitation Psychology, 59(2), 211.

Schneider, W., Schumann-Hengsteler, R., & Sodian, B. (2014). Young children’s cognitive development: Interrelationships among executive functioning, working memory, verbal ability, and theory of mind. Psychology Press.

Swanson, H. L., & Zheng, X. (2014). Memory difficulties in children and adults with learning disabilities.

Van der Molen, M. J., Henry, L. A., & Van Luit, J. E. H. (2014). Working memory development in children with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 58(7), 637-650.