An examination of the validity of the Craine Color Word Confusion Test for the evaluation of executive functioning

Almost three decades ago, James Craine Ph.D. developed a color-word test to evaluate executive functioning in brain injured patients. The Craine Color Word Confusion Test (CCWCT) consists of four subtests, similar to its parent test the Stroop, that establishes a clients ability to perform automatic reading, color recognition and set maintenance utilizing inhibition, in the initial three cards. The fourth unique card of the CCWCT further evaluates higher order cognitive and executive functioning processes by requiring the subject to incorporate earlier used skills in an alternating pattern involving set shifting, inhibition and disinhibition.; One hundred archival cases were pseudo-randomly selected from a local hospital based on the completeness of the required data. Comparative tests were selected by examination of earlier correlational research involving the Stroop and current literature on psychological testing. The four subtests of the CCWCT were correlated against the standardized tests of the: Halstead Category Test; Tactual Performance Test (Total, Memory, Location); Speech Perception; Trails Making Tests A, B and ABC; Aphasia Screening Test; Spatial Relations; Wisconsin Card Sort Test; and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised.; Correlation matrices, as well as a principal component analysis, with varimax normalized factor rotation were run incorporating all of the standardized tests and the CCWCT subtests. All of the CCWCT subtests exhibited a high correlation at p < .05, with each other as well as the other tests of executive functioning with the exception of the WCST. The WCST data in this project exhibited confounding variables pertaining to scoring and reporting. Further investigation revealed an absence of expected correlations of the WCST data to the Trail Making Tests.; Validity was established utilizing the high correlations to standardized psychological tests. Reliability was not directed established as standard methods were unable to be performed due to the historical nature of the data set, lack of a second version and sequential and progressive nature of the successive subtests. Additional research has been recommended utilizing a second version of the CCWCT and the computerized version of the WCST.; Additional correlation analysis found Trails ABC to be in 100% agreement with the other two Trail Making Tests.