by Paul W. Burgess, Tim Shallice
Purpose: Hayling and Brixton Tests are clinical assessments of executive functioning. Suitable for people with a wide range of problems (eg visual perception, movement) as it is entirely spoken
Age: 18 years to 80 years
Admin: Individual
Time: 15 minutes
Qualification Level: B
Benefits
The Hayling and Brixton Tests will be particularly useful in the following situations:
- Where the clinician wishes to use an executive test that has been developed on people with specific frontal lobe damage
- Where judgements about performance need to be related to estimated pre-morbid levels of cognitive ability
- In the assessment of very able people who may find the BADS easy
- Where testing time is limited
- When monitoring changes over time.
Hayling Sentence Completion Test features
- Entirely spoken and is thus suitable for people with a wide range of problems such as those involving reading, visual perception or movement
- Takes approximately five minutes to administer yet yields three different measures of executive functioning which can be considered separately or combined into an overall score
- Consists of two sets of 15 sentences each having the last word missing. In the first section the examiner reads each sentence aloud and the participant has to simply complete the sentences, yielding a simple measure of response initiation speed
- In the second section the subject is asked to complete the sentences with a word that does not fit, giving measures of response suppression ability and thinking time
The Brixton Spatial Anticipation Test features
- Measures the ability to detect rules in sequences of stimuli within a format that is easy to administer and is designed to be pleasant for the subject
- Takes between five and ten minutes to give, and yields an easily understood scaled scores. For detailed clinical decision-making, age and age-and-pre-morbid-iq cut-off scores are provided
- Perceptually simple and as it does not require a verbal response it is appropriate for those suffering from a wide range of deficits such as those involving speech production or reading
- Scaled scores can be derived for each measure, enabling the clinician to build a pattern of their client’s deficits
- Normative data are presented for all measures, and, for diagnostic decision-making, age related cut-off scores are given together with separate age and pre-morbid IQ cut-off scores
