The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT): norms for age, education, and ethnicity.

Abstract

The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) is often used to measure attention, concentration, working memory, and speed of information processing. Using a modified 200-item version of the PASAT with presentation rates of 3.0, 2.4, 2.0, and 1.6 items per second, we analyzed demographic influences on test performance in a large sample (N = 566) of healthy North American adults. We found that age, education, and ethnicity were significant predictors, accounting for nearly 23% of the variance in test performance. We discuss these results in comparison to previous normative studies, and present a formula and tables for computing age, education, and ethnicity-adjusted T scores for performance on the PASAT 200.