There are three different measures which are evaluated for every exercise to determine whether the player has met criterion for passing to the next level – “Grade” or Percentage of Correct Response, “Mean Time (s)”/Reaction Time, and “Response Errors”. These three passing criteria are independent of each other and (with default options) ALL three must exceed a passing threshold to advance to the next stage. The clinician can elect to disable the passing requirements for Reaction Time and Response Errors, but Grade cannot be disabled.
The Exercise Results Grid in MindPower Builder gives you an overview and brief display of which exercises were completed and passed or failed.
In the image above, you’ll see that the “Cat’s Play” exercise for Diamond – Stage 2 shows and Exit Status of Failed along with the recorded Grade (86%), Mean Reaction Time (1.62 seconds) and the number of Response Errors recorded (0). To get a detailed view of which of those three criterion did not meet the threshold for passing, you can simply double-click on a row to bring up the Exercise Results Summary for that exercise.
The Exercise Results Summary expands on the information shown in the Results Grid by not only including the person’s recorded Grade, Mean Time and number of Response Errors, but by also showing what the Passing Threshold was. In this example, we can see that the Passing threshold for Reaction Time wasn’t met (1.50 threshold vs. 1.62 recorded value). The Grade (85 threshold vs. 86 recorded value) and the Response Errors met or exceeded the passing criteria.
More detailed descriptions for each of the Criterion for passing a level are listed below.
“Grade”
Grade is the measurement of percentage of correct responses. For example, if the exercise requires a player to click every time they see a blue triangle, and they are shown 10 trials consisting of 4 blue triangles and foils of red squares make up the remaining 6 trials, their grade would be calculated as follows:
- If they clicked for all 4 triangles and did not click when they were shown a red square they would have a grade of 100.
- If they didn’t click to one blue triangle, but still didn’t click on any foils, the grade would be 75% (3/4 * 100 = 75%)
- Clicking to Foils like the Red squares will reduce the percentage of correct responses accordingly.
A common mistake is to confuse incorrect answers with response errors (discussed below) and vice versa, but we track these errors under different categories. One is a “wrong” answer in that the player made an incorrect choice. The other (Response Error) usually falls into hyperactive types of responses or tracking errors where the target area was missed on clicking.
“Mean Time (s)”
Mean Time (s) is the measurement of their response time in seconds. If they are required to click the blue triangles when they appear it will measure the time it takes them to click the blue triangle from the moment it appears in seconds. At the end of the exercise it will average all of the correct responses. If they are shown 5 blue triangles and clicked none of them their “Mean Time (s)” would be 0.0(s). If they clicked on 3 Blue Triangles in 3 seconds their “Mean Time (s)” would be 3(s).
“Response Errors”
Response Errors measure the number of times someone responds inappropriately. This is different than an incorrect response or wrong answer which would fall under the “Grade” area. Some examples of inappropriate responses would be:
- Click during the instructions
- Click when there is nothing to respond to
- Double click when they respond to a target object, these will all be counted as a response error.
- Hand/Eye Tracking Errors like bumping into barriers or attempting to click on a target but missing the target area
What counts as a response error can vary a bit from exercise to exercise but they generally fall into either hyperactive types of responses or hand/eye tracking errors. Response Errors and “Grade” or Percentage Correct are independent measures. Making a response error will NOT reduce the percentage correct measure, i.e., it is possible to have 100% grade but still make multiple response errors. Likewise, you can have 0 Response Errors and still have a reduced Grade due to incorrect responses.
