Assessment of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery test in Saudi children with learning disabilities: A case-control study [version 1; peer review: 1 approved with reservations]

Background: The neuropsychological tests and its subtests composed of the motor planning task; simple reaction time task and the intradimensional/extradimensional shift (IED) task from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) were developed to examine specific components of cognition. The main objective of this study was to examine the reliability of these CANTAB subtests in pediatric patients with learning disabilities (LD) in Saudi Arabia. Methods: We administered the CANTAB subset test to 92 participants with LD and 68 controls with no LD. The tests performed were motor planning task (MOT), simple reaction time task (SRT) and the intradimensional/extradimensional shift (IED). Results: There were no significant age difference between the case and the control group (case: 9.2 ± 2.4 years versus controls: 9.0 ± 1.6 years, p=0.544). The IED and MOT were significantly longer among patients with LD versus control (p