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Going All-Digital with the D-KEFS Advanced

by Dr. Dean Delis

I’m excited to announce the launch of the D-KEFS™ Advanced. The original D-KEFS™, published in 2001, arrived on the eve of the mobile digital revolution. By 2009, as we began planning its revision, we explored how best to harness this rapidly evolving technology. Our solution was to “go all in” by developing exclusively digital tests of executive functions, freeing ourselves from the constraints of producing equivalent paper-and-pencil versions.

Most revisions of established tests, such as the Wechsler scales, offer both a print version and a digital-assist format (e.g., via Q-Interactive®). For the D-KEFS, we chose a different path: the D-KEFS Advanced is entirely digital, administered and scored exclusively on iPad® devices. Without the need to produce equivalent print versions, we were able to fully leverage the processing power of digital devices to create innovative, dynamic measures of multitasking and other executive functions. Administration is nearly effortless, with multiple core and process measures captured and scored automatically. The resulting score report provides age-referenced and optional age/education-referenced standardized scores, new process measures, interpretive flowcharts, and speed–accuracy trade-off analyses.

Take the new D-KEFS Advanced Trail Making Test, now with three switching conditions instead of just one. Why three? One reason was to address a common criticism of neuropsychological testing: assessments typically take place in quiet, structured settings, yet real life demands complex cognitive skills (like multitasking) amid noisy, distracting environments (think bustling classrooms or busy workplaces). Traditional executive function tests fail to capture how distraction impacts performance. In our new Switching–Distraction condition, we systematically measure the effects of precisely timed visual and auditory distractions on multitasking. This feature was possible only because we weren’t constrained by the need to include an equivalent print version.

Because many psychologists still want — or need — print-based tests, we designed the D-KEFS Advanced to complement the original D-KEFS, not replace it. Both versions will remain available. That’s also why we named the new edition the D-KEFS Advanced rather than the D-KEFS–2. For example, in the new D-KEFS Advanced Trail Making Test, we streamlined the assessment by starting with Number Sequencing and omitting the Visual Scanning and Motor Speed conditions included in the original. If an examinee struggles with Number Sequencing in the Advanced version, the examiner can simply turn to the original D-KEFS to administer those baseline conditions and determine whether difficulties in number sequencing may be related to problems in those fundamental skills.

In this new blog series, I’ll describe the objectives and features of the six new D-KEFS Advanced tests and share the findings of their clinical sensitivity (effect sizes) in our national normative study. The age- and age/education-referenced norms were derived from a national study of 1,280 normative participants, ages 8 to 90. The clinical sensitivity of the tests were derived from a study of 160 participants from 5 clinical groups: children with ADHD, ASD, or specific learning disorder–Mathematics; adults with TBI; and older adults with MCI.

Below are links where you can learn more about the D-KEFS Advanced.

Thanks for reading—I look forward to sharing more about the D-KEFS Advanced in upcoming posts.

Best,

Dean

Additional D-KEFS Advanced information