Test-Retest Reliability of Four Cognitive Tasks in a not so WEIRD Sample

Abstract

Most cognitive tasks have been designed and tested in samples from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries and it is usually assumed that their psychometric properties remain consistent regardless of culture. However, several studies have observed that culture can have important effects on cognition, which may ultimately affect the reliability of these tasks. In the present study, test-retest reliability of the Colour Word Stroop Task, Sustained Attention to Response Task, Stop-Signal Task, and Updating Letter Memory Task were tested in a sample obtained from Ecuador, a population that does not share many of the characteristics of WEIRD countries. Most of the reliability scores obtained by Intraclass Correlation Coefficients in the Ecuadorian sample were similar to those found in WEIRD populations, ranging from moderate to good. Our results suggest that culture may not be an important factor in the reliability of cognitive tasks.