Measuring Perceptual Speed in Complex Everyday Situations

Abstract

This paper describes first results of the development of a new test to measure perceptual speed in everyday situations. The new items are best described as images depicting typical situations in everyday life, which have some picture elements in common. The pictures were presented to the subjects for a short time, and their task was to indicate which of 5 goal stimuli were present in the respective pictures seen before. In two studies, the scalability of the new items according to the Rasch model was investigated. In Study 1 data from 316 subjects with heterogeneous educational backgrounds were used in the empirical analysis. The results of Study 1 indicate that Rasch homogeneity and thus positive psychometric properties for the new test could be obtained. This result was further validated using a second sample ( N = 198). The validation study replicates the results obtained in Study 1. These results represent a substantial condition sine qua non for following studies on the construct and criterion validity of the new test.