Establishing Normative Data for the Number Cancelation Test Among Children in Kindergartens and Primary Schools in China

This study aimed to suggest an attention assessment tool using a Digital Pen for measuring the temporal-spatial parameters during the Number Cancelation Test (NCT), and then to establish the normative data for the NCT among children in kindergartens and primary schools in China by recruiting a total of 989 children (496 males). Four measures, i.e., selective attention (SA), speed of cognitive processing (SpC), averaged time of circlings (ATC), and averaged circumference of circled curves (ACCC), were proposed to evaluate the NCT performance. They basically have a development trend with fast speed in the beginning before Grade 1 or 2 of primary schools, and then enter an extremely slow development period (with ceiling or floor effect). SA and SpC have gender and grade main effects, while ATC and ACCC have the grade main effect, only. In particular, females have higher SA scores than males in middle class of kindergarten, and Grade 2–Grade 5 of primary school, but no gender differences in other grades; females have higher SpC scores than males in middle class of kindergarten, and Grade 3–4 of primary school, but no gender differences in other grades. More importantly, in clinical practice, if SA or SpC measure of a child is below than the 5th centile (i.e., p5 level) of his/her grade-specific normative data, then this child may be predicted to have a high-risk of learning disabilities. Findings suggest that the proposed method can be used for early screening of learning disabilities by setting appropriate cut-off values.