Publication details
Brief Adaptive Nonverbal Test (BANT), the diagnostic tool evaluating nonverbal cognitive skills in preschool-aged children
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Ceskoslovenska psychologie |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://doi.org/10.51561/cspsych.69.3.176 |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.51561/cspsych.69.3.176 |
| Keywords | preschool age;non-verbal thinking;computer adaptive testing (CAT);school readiness |
| Description | Objectives. This study presents the development and validation of the diagnostic tool Brief Adaptive Nonverbal Test (BANT). The tool is intended to evaluate nonverbal cognitive skills in preschool-aged children, with a special focus on school readiness use. Method. BANT was developed in a two-stage process involving item calibration and subsequent validation on independent samples of preschool children. In the first calibration phase, test items were administered on tablets and their IRT parameters were estimated, with the objective of developing an adaptive test. In the validation phase, the resulting adaptive test was administered to an independent sample of preschool children in order to determine the test’s reliability, validity and investigate the test’s internal consistency. In addition to the BANT, children in the validation sample were administered various tasks included in a preschool diagnostic application Myška, which were used to obtain validity estimates. Sample and settings. Data collection for the development of the method followed two steps. Both took place in kindergartens and aimed at children aged 4 to 7 years. Calibration sample consisted of N1=302 children from 17 different kindergartens. Validation sample with prepared computer adaptive testing algorithm comprised N2=507 children (girls 49.4%, boys 50.6%), examined in 37 kindergartens from 11 regions. All children were examined in their preschools, using tablets to administer the BANT and the battery of preschool diagnostic tasks Myška. Analyses and results. Item calibration, check of CAT mechanism functioning, different item functioning analysis, reliability analyses, ability estimates and norms development has been performed using appropriate packages in R (R Core team, 2023). Testing with the CAT version of the test is significantly less time consuming in comparison with the fixed version of the test (m=2.78 mins compared to m=7.62 mins with fixed test; items administered m=X items compared to 59 items with fixed test). Reliability over 0,80 has been achieved approx. for -3 to +1 theta estimates, with a peak over 0,95 at approximately -1,75 theta estimate. Correlations with other tests in Myška application support the interpretation of the test results, according to which test aims at visual processing and non-verbal reasoning using visual material. Overall, BANT appears to be a practical tool for evaluating cognitive development and school readiness in the general cognitive domain in pre-school children. Its fast adaptive administration using tablets is a practical utilisation in pedagogical and clinical practices and is especially beneficial to children with language barriers. Limitations. In subsequent development, the results from the task should be validated against a dedicated nonverbal cognition tool such as SON-R. |