Comprehensive Trail-Making Test (CTMT)
by Cecil R. Reynolds, Ph.D.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT)

.

.

.

Shipley-2

.

.

.

Extended Complex Figure Test (ECFT)

.

.

.

.

Based on time-tested techinques, the CTMT is a standardized set of five visual search and sequencing tasks that are heavily influenced by attention, concentration, resistance to distraction, and cognitive flexibility (or set-shifting). It is highly useful in the evaluation and diagnosis of brain injury; frontal lobe deficits; problems with psychomotor speed, visual search and sequencing, and attention; and impairments in set-shifting.

The CTMT is for individuals ages 8 through 74. Administration is timed and takes from 5 to 12 minutes. Scoring typically requires just a few minutes more. Normative scores, derived from a nationwide sample of 1,664 people, are provided as percentile ranks and T-scores with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.

The basic task of trail-making is to connect a series of stimuli (numbers and letters) in a specified order as fast as possible. The score derived for each trail is the number of seconds required to complete the task. The composite score is obtained by pooling T-scores from the individual trails. Although similar, the test’s five trails differ from each other in some significant way. For example, Trail 1 requires the examinee to draw a line connecting the numbers 1 through 25 in order, while Trail 2 presents the same task with 29 distracters on the same page.

The CTMT is extremely sensitive to neurological insult, disease, injury, or dysfunction, including the subtle neuropsychological problems often present in individuals with learning disabilities.

.

.