Non-Verbal Cognitive Tasks
Hub page: language-independent behavioural assays that can be applied — in principle with the same task logic — to young children, rodents, non-human primates, and human adults. Two condition clusters are developed in the wiki: depression and mood disorders (below) and autism spectrum disorder (summary below; full deep dive on autism-nonverbal-cognitive-tasks). Platform layer: cantab, automated-cognitive-testing-devices; drug-screening architecture: preclinical-drug-screening.
Non-verbal behavioural assays cross the barrier of language and age, allowing the same tasks to be applied to young children, rodents, non-human primates, and human adults. In depression research they isolate “hot” affective biases (how mood alters choices) and “cold” executive controls; in ASD research they remove the language confound and carry the task logic into genetic animal models. 1
Depression and mood disorders
Four primary non-verbal tasks have translational validity as cognitive-affective biomarkers for depression:
| Task | Cognitive Metric | Animal Protocol | Child Protocol |
|---|---|---|---|
| affective-bias-test | Biased memory retrieval | Digging bowl textures | Card/Object pairing |
| cognitive-judgement-bias | Pessimism vs. Optimism | Tone pitches & food | Tone pitches & touchscreens |
| delayed-match-to-sample | Visual working memory | Primate screen selection | Kids touchscreen matching |
| intradimensional-extradimensional-shift | Mental flexibility | Odor/Texture discrimination | Color/Shape discrimination |
The pairing proposed in the source material is one affective-bias measure (affective-bias-test or cognitive-judgement-bias) plus one executive measure (delayed-match-to-sample or intradimensional-extradimensional-shift) for the most comprehensive assessment of depression-like cognitive dysfunction. 1
Autism spectrum disorder
ASD has no single cognitive signature: meta-analyses find moderate, domain-general executive dysfunction (g ≈ 0.48; few measures clinically sensitive 2), group differences that are not specific to any executive subdomain and are heavily confounded by ASD–ADHD co-occurrence 3, and effect sizes that have shrunk as diagnostic boundaries broadened 4. The most discriminative non-verbal signals are social-attention eye-tracking (individual-level sensitivity/specificity up to 78%/85% in toddlers 5) and the reversal-learning component of cognitive flexibility 6. Tasks with the best cross-species translation:
| Domain | Best human tasks (evidence) | Cross-species analogs |
|---|---|---|
| Visuospatial working memory | [[spatial-working-memory | CANTAB SWM]] — errors ↑, strategy ↓ 7 |
| Cognitive flexibility / reversal | [[intradimensional-extradimensional-shift | CANTAB IED]] 8; [[reversal-learning |
| Associative / episodic memory | CANTAB PAL; NIH-TCB Picture Sequence Memory (adolescents 9; not children 10) | paired-association learning — impaired in SHANK3 F1 macaques 11 |
| Social attention / gaze | eye-tracking batteries: ABC-CT Oculomotor Index (d ≈ −0.8) 12; social visual engagement (71.0/80.7% sens/spec) 13 | reduced eye contact in SHANK3 monkeys 14; reduced gaze in VPA marmosets predicts adult inflexibility 15; no direct rodent analog |
| Inhibitory control & processing speed | NIH-TCB Flanker + Pattern Comparison differentiate after age/IQ control 10; interference control — distinct from action cancellation (stop-signal-task) | (rodent attention tasks; standardisation still pending) |
Batteries. CANTAB’s sample ASD battery (ERT, MTS, MTT, OTS, PAL, RTI, SWM) 16; NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery — fluid-over-crystallized profile in ASD 109; ABC-CT — eye-tracking/EEG battery built for clinical-trial readiness 12. Full detail: autism-nonverbal-cognitive-tasks.
Model translation at a glance. Shank3 mice: touchscreen discrimination-learning deficit with normal sociability 17; Shank3 rats: late-emerging discrimination/reversal deficits 18; SHANK3 macaques: repetitive behaviour, social/learning impairments, selective PAL deficit (WM spared) 1911; VPA marmosets: childhood gaze deficit predicting adult inflexibility 15.
Pre-Clinical Application
For preclinical-drug-screening, these tasks enable a move beyond old “behavioural despair” assays (forced swim test) to cognitive-affective biomarkers with better face validity. The cantab battery (Cambridge Cognition) offers a standardised, touchscreen-based platform for many of these tasks, validated across clinical and pre-clinical settings.
- Disease Model Induction — Chronic Unpredictable Mild Stress (CUMS), Social Defeat Stress (SDS), or pharmacological inducers (tetrabenazine, LPS)
- Primary Screening — One task for learning bias (affective-bias-test) and one for judgment bias (cognitive-judgement-bias)
- Treatment Cohorts — Vehicle, drug control, depressed+vehicle, depressed+reference, depressed+candidate
- Key Metrics — Choice bias ratio, omission rates, locomotor activity control, sustained vs. acute clearance
Confounds
- True cognitive-affective recovery must be distinguished from simple psychostimulant effects using a parallel open field test
- Omission rates differentiate cognitive improvement from sedation
- Test at 1-hour (acute) and 24-hour (sustained) post-dose to identify long-lasting neuroplastic adjustments
Related Pages
affective-bias-test | cognitive-judgement-bias | delayed-match-to-sample | intradimensional-extradimensional-shift | reversal-learning | stop-signal-task | autism-nonverbal-cognitive-tasks
See Also
- abcd-study — Large longitudinal US study using CANTAB-based cognitive assessments