Traditional Assessment or Invisible Assessment Using Games? New Frontiers in Cognitive Assessment

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of anxiety related to traditional assessment, which can affect assessment outcomes and underestimate the performance of subjects. Invisible assessment makes it possible to evaluate subjects without making them feel like they are being evaluated. Invisible evaluation tests were developed for touch screen tablets for 3 cognitive domains: intelligence, calculation, and reading. These tests were applied to 337 children from kindergarten through third grade, who attended 3 mixed-funding schools in Santiago, Chile. The schools were convenience sampled and all the children whose parents signed the informed consent form were included. The final sample was randomly distributed among the domains. Correlations between traditional assessment tests and invisible assessment tests were observed. Children reported a preference for invisible assessment over traditional assessment. Subjects with low academic performance obtained better scores on invisible assessment tests than on traditional tests, according to a mixed factors analysis of variance. These findings suggest that it is possible to assess cognitive domains with nontraditional instruments and that they can reveal the real academic performance of subjects.