Christina Cordero 

Professor Zayas 

Writing for the sciences 

Research proposal 

 

My question is, “How credible are cognitive tests based on their effect size, and if their age groups are concurrent with their results”? My overall goal is to determine whether specific cognitive tests that are still used today should still be administered to various participants, or if they shouldn’t be used because of racial bias or failure to have been updated based on people today. Figure out if cognitive decline only exists in older adults or if older adults are labeled inaccurately based on the cognitive test they take. If someone studies older adults’ cognition as a whole, they are labeled one way, even though not every single older adult suffers from cognitive decline. When looking at all the cognitive processes, many older adults accelerate in specific cognitive processes because of the continued development of their brains even after their brain stops growing.  

 

My initial hypothesis is: Some of the cognitive tests that I study within the meta-analysis will be viewed based on how they test their participants, what questions they use, and how they calculate their effect sizes based on the results from their participants. All cognitive tests usually test for the same variables, so all of their results should reflect each other in certain areas, therefore, inconsistencies can be detected when looking at their overall scores. Some of these cognitive tests might be considered non-optimal due to racial and cultural biases, as well as not depicting older adults in the correct way based on their effect size.

 

My research has two different implications. First, it will establish that well-used cognitive tests may not be efficient based on the age groups they choose to test and how they compare those individuals to other people, while determining cognitive impairment. Second, my research aims to find out if older people are labeled incorrectly based on the number of people being tested, because if their effect size is too big, then it may detect differences that are quite small, if any at all. When having a smaller effect size, it tends to reveal more differences because the number of people is limited, making it easier to compare their participants. Older people in general are diagnosed with cognitive decline because it is generated in the entire population, but if you take smaller snippets, you may find that not all older adults experience cognitive decline. 

            One of the studies that informed my understanding was Cheryl Grady’s article on memory processing with age, Grady, C. L., & Craik , F. I. (2000, April 10). Changes in memory processing with age. Current opinion in neurobiology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10753795/. Grady specified that humans have losses of memory with age however, not all types of their memory are affected. It was concluded that neuroimaging experiments have shown that, depending on the task, adults can show greater or lesser activity in tasks relevant to the brain compared to younger adults. The second study that gave insight on my understanding was Murman’s article implementing that as an older person would try to complete a cognitive test, processing speed and their perception declines with their age which is a big impact on their test performance and it is shown in many of their cognitive domains, Murman, D. L. (2015, August). The impact of age on cognition. Seminars in hearing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906299/. The final study was conducted by Zhang, and he established that small effect sizes are not likely to report large beneficial effects compared to a large effect size when dealing with studies in critical care medicine, Zhang, Z., Xu, X., & Ni, H. (2013, January 9). Small studies may overestimate the effect sizes in critical care meta-analyses: A meta-epidemiological study. Critical care (London, England). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056100/. All these articles collectively lead to my hypothesis because it concludes that as some people get older, their cognitive processes slow down, and it is harder for them to complete cognitive tests accurately.