Biber Cognitive Estimation Test (BCET)

Background

The Biber Cognitive Estimation Test (BCET) is a 20-item neuropsychological assessment used to evaluate people's ability to provide reasonable estimates for questions that cannot be answered by direct factual memory alone. This estimation ability is generally considered to be impacted by a wide range of neurological conditions, particularly those with damage in the frontal or parietal lobes. The task was first published by Sarah Bullard and colleagues in 2004 who sought to provide a standardized assessment tool to measure cognitive estimation abilities to help distinguish between normal and atypical cognitive decline in order to diagnose conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and traumatic brain injury.

The BCET runs 20 questions divided evenly across four distinct categories such as time/duration, quantity, weight, and distance/length. The questions ask for real-life quantity estimations where the exact answer is typically unknown (e.g., "How many seeds are there in a watermelon?"). Responses are evaluated against the standardized normative range (typically the 5th to 95th percentile) provided by Bullard et al and scored as correct or incorrect.

The Millisecond BCET adapts the original paper-and-pencil administration to the computer.

Task Procedure

The BCET asks 20 questions, presented in fixed order. Five questions each are asked for categories 'time/duration' (e.g., "How long does it take to iron a shirt?"), 'quantity' (e.g., "How many seeds are there in a watermelon?"), 'weight' (e.g., "How much does a telephone weigh?") and length (e.g., "How long is a tablespoon?"). Each question provides a textbox and participants are asked to enter their estimation responses. Instructions explicitly ask participants to enter numbers and a unit for each estimation. If the script cannot retrieve a valid number and/or unit from the provided response, participants get prompted to correct their response up to 5 times.

The script accepts a wide range of units, e.g. "g" and "gr" for "grams" or "lb" for "pounds". Under the cover, each estimation is converted into a target unit and compared to the normative data.

What it Measures

The Biber Cognitive Estimation Test (BCET) is a standardized assessment tool of people's estimation abilities

Psychological domains

• Reasoning and Problem-Solving: Formulating a logical strategy to break down a novel problem
• Self-Monitoring: Evaluating one's own answer for plausibility
• Cognitive Flexibility: Shifting between different metric types, units of measurement, and contexts across the 20 questions.
• Fact Retrieval: Accessing baseline anchor facts
• Numeracy: Having a baseline "sense" of numbers, scales, and magnitudes.

Main Performance Metrics

• BCET Score: the number of total correct answers out of 20; main measure of estimation abilities

Psychiatric Conditions

BCET performance has been found to be impaired in the following patient groups

• Alzheimer's Disease (AD)
• Frontotemporal Dementia
• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

References

Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Biber Cognitive Estimation Test (BCET).

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Bullard, S. E., Fein, D., Gleeson, M. K., Tischer, N., Mapou, R. L., & Kaplan, E. (2004). The Biber Cognitive Estimation Test. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 19(6), 835–846. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acn.2003.12.002

Bisbing, T. A., Olm, C. A., McMillan, C. T., Rascovsky, K., Baehr, L., Ternes, K., Irwin, D. J., Clark, R., & Grossman, M. (2015). Estimating frontal and parietal involvement in cognitive estimation: a study of focal neurodegenerative diseases. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 317. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00317

Fortune, D. G., & Richards, H. L. (2017). Assessing Cognitive Estimation and Its Effects on Community Integration in People with Acquired Brain Injury Undergoing Rehabilitation. BioMed Research International, 2017(2017), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/2874819