How is race perceived during adolescence? A meta-analysis of the own-race bias.

Adolescence is a critical developmental period that is marked by drastic changes in face recognition, which are reflected in patterns of bias (i.e., superior recognition for some individuals compared to others). Here, we evaluate how race is perceived during face recognition and whether adolescents exhibit an own-race bias (ORB). We conducted a Bayesian meta-analysis to estimate the summary effect size of the ORB across 16 unique studies (38 effect sizes) with 1,321 adolescent participants between the ages of ∼10-22 years of age. This meta-analytic approach allowed us to inform the analysis with prior findings from the adult literature and evaluate how well they fit the adolescent literature. We report a positive, small ORB (Hedges's g = 0.24) that was evident under increasing levels of uncertainty in the analysis. The magnitude of the ORB was not systematically impacted by participant age or race, which is inconsistent with predictions from perceptual expertise and social cognitive theories. Critically, our findings are limited in generalizability by the study samples, which largely include White adolescents in White-dominant countries. Future longitudinal studies that include racially diverse samples and measure social context, perceiver motivation, peer reorientation, social network composition, and ethnic-racial identity development are critical for understanding the presence, magnitude, and relative flexibility of the ORB in adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Autistic Individuals Do Not Alter Visual Processing Strategy During Encoding Versus Recognition of Faces: A Hidden Markov Modeling Approach.

PURPOSE: Visual face recognition-the ability to encode, discriminate, and recognize the faces of others-is fundamentally supported by eye movements and is a common source of difficulty for autistic individuals. We aimed to evaluate how visual processing strategies (i.e., eye movement patterns) directly support encoding and recognition of faces in autistic and neurotypical (NT) individuals. METHODS: We used a hidden Markov modeling approach to evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics of eye movements in autistic (n = 15) and neurotypical (NT) adolescents (n = 17) during a face identity recognition task. RESULTS: We discovered distinct eye movement patterns among all participants, which included a focused and exploratory strategy. When evaluating change in visual processing strategy across encoding and recognition phases, autistic individuals did not shift their eye movement patterns like their NT peers, who shifted to a more exploratory visual processing strategy during recognition. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that autistic individuals do not modulate their visual processing strategy across encoding and recognition of faces, which may be an indicator of less efficient face processing.

Social visual attention as a treatment outcome: evaluating the social games for autistic adolescents (SAGA) intervention.

A core feature of autism involves difficulty perceiving and interpreting eye gaze shifts as nonverbal communicative signals. A hypothesis about the origins of this phenotype is that it emerges from developmentally different social visual attention (SVA). We developed Social Games for Autistic Adolescents (SAGA; Scherf et al. BMJ Open 8(9):e023682, 2018) as a serious game intervention for autistic individuals to discover the significance of eye gaze cues. Previously, we demonstrated the effectiveness of SAGA to improve the perception and understanding of eye gaze cues and social skills for autistic adolescents (Griffin et al. JCPP Adv 1(3):e12041, 2021). Here, we determine whether increases in social visual attention to faces and/or target gazed-at objects, as measured via eye tracking during the same Gaze Perception task in the same study sample, moderated this improvement. In contrast to predictions, SVA to faces did not differentially increase for the treatment group. Instead, both groups evinced a small increase in SVA to faces over time. Second, Prior to the SAGA intervention, attention to faces failed to predict performance in the Gaze Perception task for both the treatment and standard care control groups. However, at post-test, autistic adolescents in the treatment group were more likely to identify the object of directed gaze when they attended longer to faces and longer to target objects. Importantly, this is the first study to measure social visual attention via eye tracking as a treatment response in an RCT for autism. NCT02968225.

Investigating the Face Inversion Effect in Autism Across Behavioral and Neural Measures of Face Processing: A Systematic Review and Bayesian Meta-Analysis.

Importance: Face processing is foundational to human social cognition, is central to the hallmark features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and shapes neural systems and social behavior. Highly efficient and specialized, the face processing system is sensitive to inversion, demonstrated by reduced accuracy in recognition and altered neural response to inverted faces. Understanding at which mechanistic level the autistic face processing system may be particularly different, as measured by the face inversion effect, will improve overall understanding of brain functioning in autism. Objective: To synthesize data from the extant literature to determine differences of the face processing system in ASD, as measured by the face inversion effect, across multiple mechanistic levels. Data Sources: Systematic searches were conducted in the MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and PubMed databases from inception to August 11, 2022. Study Selection: Original research that reported performance-based measures of face recognition to upright and inverted faces in ASD and neurotypical samples were included for quantitative synthesis. All studies were screened by at least 2 reviewers. Data Extraction and Synthesis: This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted according to the 2020 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) reporting guideline. Multiple effect sizes were extracted from studies to maximize information gain and statistical precision and used a random-effects, multilevel modeling framework to account for statistical dependencies within study samples. Main Outcomes and Measures: Effect sizes were calculated as a standardized mean change score between ASD and neurotypical samples (ie, Hedges g). The primary outcome measure was performance difference between upright and inverted faces during face recognition tasks. Measurement modality, psychological construct, recognition demand, sample age, sample sex distribution, and study quality assessment scores were assessed as moderators. Results: Of 1768 screened articles, 122 effect sizes from 38 empirical articles representing data from 1764 individual participants (899 ASD individuals and 865 neurotypical individuals) were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, face recognition performance differences between upright and inverted faces were reduced in autistic individuals compared with neurotypical individuals (g = -0.41; SE = 0.11; 95% credible interval [CrI], -0.63 to -0.18). However, there was considerable heterogeneity among effect sizes, which were explored with moderator analysis. The attenuated face inversion effect in autistic individuals was more prominent in emotion compared with identity recognition (b = 0.46; SE = 0.26; 95% CrI, -0.08 to 0.95) and in behavioral compared with electrophysiological measures (b = 0.23; SE = 0.24; 95% CrI, -0.25 to 0.70). Conclusions and Relevance: This study found that on average, face recognition in autism is less impacted by inversion. These findings suggest less specialization or expertise of the face processing system in autism, particularly in recognizing emotion from faces as measured in behavioral paradigms.

Memory and creativity: A meta-analytic examination of the relationship between memory systems and creative cognition.

Increasing evidence suggests that specific memory systems (e.g., semantic vs. episodic) may support specific creative thought processes. However, there are a number of inconsistencies in the literature regarding the strength, direction, and influence of different memory (semantic, episodic, working, and short-term) and creativity (divergent and convergent thinking) types, as well as the influence of external factors (age, stimuli modality) on this purported relationship. In this meta-analysis, we examined 525 correlations from 79 published studies and unpublished datasets, representing data from 12,846 individual participants. We found a small but significant (r = .19) correlation between memory and creative cognition. Among semantic, episodic, working, and short-term memory, all correlations were significant, but semantic memory - particularly verbal fluency, the ability to strategically retrieve information from long-term memory - was found to drive this relationship. Further, working memory capacity was found to be more strongly related to convergent than divergent creative thinking. We also found that within visual creativity, the relationship with visual memory was greater than that of verbal memory, but within verbal creativity, the relationship with verbal memory was greater than that of visual memory. Finally, the memory-creativity correlation was larger for children compared to young adults despite no impact of age on the overall effect size. These results yield three key conclusions: (1) semantic memory supports both verbal and nonverbal creative thinking, (2) working memory supports convergent creative thinking, and (3) the cognitive control of memory is central to performance on creative thinking tasks.

A multilevel Bayesian meta-analysis of the body inversion effect: Evaluating controversies over headless and sexualized bodies.

Face and body perception rely on specialized processing mechanisms to interpret social information efficiently. The body inversion effect (BIE), refers to an inversion effect for bodies, such that recognition of bodies is impaired by inversion. The BIE, like the face inversion effect (FIE), is particularly important because a disproportionate BIE relative to inversion effects for objects could be interpreted in much the same way as the disproportionate FIE has often been characterized; that is, as evidence of specialized, configural processing. However, research supporting the BIE is marked by methodological heterogeneity and mixed findings. Our multilevel Bayesian meta-analysis addresses inconsistencies in the literature by pooling data from numerous studies to estimate the magnitude of the BIE across various methodological and stimulus properties. We included 180 effect sizes from 41 empirical articles representing data from 2,274 participants. Overall, we found that the BIE was moderate-large in magnitude (Hedges' g = 0.75). Importantly, the inversion effect was larger for bodies than objects (b = 0.42); however, the inversion effect for faces was larger than for bodies (b = 0.34). We tested the role of discrimination dimension, stimulus type, face/head inclusion, stimulus sexualization, and sexualized stimulus sex as moderators of the BIE. We found that the BIE was moderated by discrimination dimension, stimulus type, stimulus sexualization, and sexualized stimulus sex. By synthesizing the existing literature, we provide a better theoretical understanding of how underlying visual processing mechanisms may differ for different types of social information (i.e., bodies vs. faces).

The Episodic Memory Profile in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis.

Although autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are commonly characterized by diminished episodic memory, the literature in this area is mixed. We address these inconsistent findings by employing multilevel Bayesian meta-analysis to quantify episodic memory differences between individuals with ASD and typically developing (TD) controls. We used meta-regression to evaluate the effects of test modality (e.g., word list, story recall), delay interval (immediate vs. delayed), retrieval demands (recognition vs. recall), and sensory modality (auditory vs. visual) on episodic memory in ASD. A total of 338 effect sizes from 113 empirical articles, including 5,632 unique participants (ASD = 2,777, TD = 2,855), were included. Results show that the memory deficits associated with ASD were larger for recall (g = -0.52, se = 0.04, 95% CrI [-0.60, -0.43]) compared to recognition (g = -0.25, se = 0.05, 95% CrI [-0.35, -0.14]) and differed based on the testing modality. For example, effect sizes were smallest for words (g = -0.28, se = 0.05, 95% CrI [-0.38, -0.18]), pictures (g = -0.38, se = 0.07, 95% CrI [-0.52, -0.24]), and figure reproduction (g = -0.49, se = 0.11, 95% CrI [-0.70, -0.27]). However, effect sizes for sentences (g = -0.59, se = 0.20, 95% CrI [-1.00, -0.21]), stories (Hedges' g = -0.54, se = 0.08, 95% CrI [-0.69, -0.38]) and staged events (g = -0.75, se = 0.10, 95% CrI [-0.95, -0.55]) were much larger. These findings suggest that ASD is associated with a small to medium reduction in scores on episodic memory tests relative to TD controls.

The lack of statistical power of subgroup analyses in meta-analyses: a cautionary note.

One of the most used methods to examine sources of heterogeneity in meta-analyses is the so-called 'subgroup analysis'. In a subgroup analysis, the included studies are divided into two or more subgroups, and it is tested whether the pooled effect sizes found in these subgroups differ significantly from each other. Subgroup analyses can be considered as a core component of most published meta-analyses. One important problem of subgroup analyses is the lack of statistical power to find significant differences between subgroups. In this paper, we explore the power problems of subgroup analyses in more detail, using 'metapower', a recently developed statistical package in R to examine power in meta-analyses, including subgroup analyses. We show that subgroup analyses require many more included studies in a meta-analysis than are needed for the main analyses. We work out an example of an 'average' meta-analysis, in which a subgroup analysis requires 3-4 times the number of studies that are needed for the main analysis to have sufficient power. This number of studies increases exponentially with decreasing effect sizes and when the studies are not evenly divided over the subgroups. Higher heterogeneity also requires increasing numbers of studies. We conclude that subgroup analyses remain an important method to examine potential sources of heterogeneity in meta-analyses, but that meta-analysts should keep in mind that power is very low for most subgroup analyses. As in any statistical evaluation, researchers should not rely on a test and p-value to interpret results, but should compare the confidence intervals and interpret results carefully.

Cracking the Code of Live Human Social Interactions in Autism: A Review of the Eye-Tracking Literature.

Human social interaction involves a complex, dynamic exchange of verbal and non-verbal information. Over the last decade, eye-tracking technology has afforded unique insight into the way eye gaze information, including both holding gaze and shifting gaze, organizes live human interactions. For example, while playing a social game together, speakers end their turn by directing gaze at the listener, who begins to speak with averted gaze (Ho et al., 2015). These findings reflect how eye gaze can be used to signal important turn-taking transitions in social interactions. Deficits in conversational turn-taking is a core feature of autism spectrum disorders. Individuals on the autism spectrum also have notable difficulties processing eye gaze information (Griffin & Scherf, 2020). A central hypothesis in the literature is that the difficulties in processing eye gaze information are foundational to the social communication deficits that make social interactions so challenging for individuals on the autism spectrum. Although eye-tracking technology has been used extensively to assess the way individuals on the spectrum attend to stimuli presented on computer screens (for review see Papagiannopoulou et al., 2014), it has rarely been used to evaluate the critical question regarding whether and how autistic individuals process non-verbal social cues from their partners during live social interactions. Here, we review this emerging literature with a focus on characterizing the experimental paradigms and eye-tracking procedures to understand the scope (and limitations) of research questions and findings. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings from this review and provide recommendations for future work that will be essential to understand whether and how fundamental difficulties in perceiving and processing information about eye gaze cues interfere with social communication skills in autism.

Improving sensitivity to eye gaze cues in adolescents on the autism spectrum using serious game technology: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Perceiving and interpreting eye gaze cues is foundational for social cognition and social interactions because it involves the ability to use eye gaze direction to predict the actions and intentions of others. Autism is a disability that impacts social interactions. A diagnostic symptom of autism is difficulty understanding eye gaze cues as social signals. This deficit has long-term consequences for understanding goal-directed behavior, language learning, and social communication. We hypothesize that targeted intervention methods designed to improve sensitivity to eye gaze cues may begin to treat core symptoms of autism and potentially alter multiple aspects of social functioning. Social Games for Autistic Adolescents (SAGA) is a serious computer game intervention designed to improve sensitivity to eye gaze cues. Serious games improve targeted skills with the goal of enhancing real life outcomes. In SAGA, participants progress through a narrative storyline and interact with animated characters. In so doing, they implicitly discover that eye gaze cues are useful for guiding their own goal-directed behavior to solve problems in the game. Methods: We evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of SAGA in a hybrid phase 1/2, randomized controlled trial. Forty adolescents on the autism spectrum were randomized to either the treatment or standard care control group. Adolescents in the treatment group were asked to play SAGA for 30-minute sessions at home 3 times a week over 10 weeks. Results: A group × time interaction revealed that the treatment group developed increasing sensitivity to human eye gaze cues, whereas the standard care group did not. Participants who experienced a sufficient dose of gameplay showed larger treatment-related improvements. Critically, increases in sensitivity to human eye gaze cues were associated with improvements in social skills. Conclusions: This accessible, scalable, and affordable intervention shows promise as an effective tool for improving the ability to interpret and understand eye gaze cues and social skills in adolescents on the autism spectrum.

A quantitative meta-analysis of face recognition deficits in autism: 40 years of research.

The ability to recognize an individual face is essential to human social interaction. Even subtle errors in this process can have huge implications for the way we relate to social partners. Because autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social interaction, researchers have theorized about the potential role of atypical face identity processing to the symptom profile of ASD for more than 40 years. We conducted an empirical meta-analysis of this large literature to determine whether and to what extent face identity processing is atypical in ASD compared to typically developing (TD) individuals. We also tested the hypotheses that the deficit is selective to face identity recognition, not perception, and that methodological variation across studies moderates the magnitude of the estimated deficit. We identified 112 studies (5,390 participants) that generated 172 effect sizes from both recognition (k = 119) and discrimination (k = 53) paradigms. We used state-of-the-art approaches for assessing the validity and robustness of the analyses. We found comparable and large deficits in ASD for both face identity recognition (Hedge's g = -0.86) and discrimination (Hedge's g = -0.82). This means that the score of an average ASD individual is nearly 1 SD below the average TD individual on tasks assessing both aspects of face identity processing. These deficits generalize across age groups, sex, IQ scores, and task paradigms. These findings suggest that deficits in face identity processing may represent a core deficit in ASD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring sensitivity to eye gaze cues in naturalistic scenes: Presenting the eye gaze FoCuS database.

OBJECTIVES: The ability to process information about eye gaze and its use for nonverbal communication is foundational to human social interactions. We developed and validated a database of stimuli that are optimized to investigate the perception and referential understanding of shifts in eye gaze. METHODS: The 245 Gaze Perception stimuli are digital photographs that test the ability to estimate and interpret eye gaze trajectory. The 82 Gaze Following stimuli are digital videos that measure the ability to follow and interpret eye gaze shifts online. Both stimuli were designed for a 4-alternative forced choice paradigm (4AFC) in which the participant identifies the gazed-at object. RESULTS: Each stimulus was validated by independent raters and only included if the endorsement of the correct item was ≥75%. Finally, we provided timestamps for 19 40-second video segments from adolescent-oriented entertainment movies that are matched on several factors. These segments involve social interactions with eye gaze shifts and can be used to measure visual social attention. CONCLUSIONS: This database will be an excellent resource for researchers interested in studying the developmental, behavioral, and/or neural mechanisms supporting the perception and interpretation of eye gaze cues.

Does decreased visual attention to faces underlie difficulties interpreting eye gaze cues in autism?

BACKGROUND: Shifts in eye gaze communicate social information that allows people to respond to another's behavior, interpret motivations driving behavior, and anticipate subsequent behavior. Understanding the social communicative nature of gaze shifts requires the ability to link eye movements and mental state information about objects in the world. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical sensitivity to eye gaze cues, which impacts social communication and relationships. We evaluated whether reduced visual attention to faces explains this difficulty in ASD. METHODS: We employed eye-tracking technology to measure visual attention to faces and gazed-at objects in a 4-alternative forced choice paradigm in adolescents with ASD and typically developing (TD) adolescents. Participants determined the target object that an actor was looking at in ecologically rich scenes. We controlled for group differences in task engagement and data quality. RESULTS: In the Gaze Following task, adolescents with ASD were relatively impaired (Cohen's d = 0.63) in the ability to identify the target object. In contrast to predictions, both groups exhibited comparable fixation durations to faces and target objects. Among both groups, individuals who looked longer at the target objects, but not faces, performed better in the task. Finally, among the ASD group, parent SSIS-Social Skills ratings were positively associated with performance on the Gaze Following task. In the Gaze Perception task, there was a similar pattern of results, which provides internal replication of the findings that visual attention to faces is not related to difficulty interpreting eye gaze cues. Together, these findings indicate that adolescents with ASD are capable of following gaze, but have difficulty linking gaze shifts with mental state information. LIMITATIONS: Additional work is necessary to determine whether these findings generalize to individuals across the full autism spectrum. New paradigms that manipulate component processes of eye gaze processing need to be tested to confirm these interpretations. CONCLUSIONS: Reduced visual attention to faces does not appear to contribute to atypical processing of eye gaze cues among adolescents with ASD. Instead, the difficulty for individuals with ASD is related to understanding the social communicative aspects of eye gaze information, which may not be extracted from visual cues alone.

Quantifying the face inversion effect in nonhuman primates: a phylogenetic meta-analysis.

Face recognition is important for primate social cognition, enabling rapid discrimination between faces and objects. In humans, face recognition is characterized by certain cognitive specializations such as face-specific sensitivity to upright faces. The face inversion effect reflects the disproportionate inversion cost (i.e., poorer recognition of inverted compared to upright stimuli) for faces compared to non-face objects. Numerous studies have evaluated the face inversion effect in various nonhuman primates, but the findings are highly variable and mixed, especially in monkeys. To address this inconsistency, the current study employed a multilevel, phylogenetic meta-analysis on 52 effect sizes across 16 studies to quantify the magnitude of the face inversion effect in nonhuman primates. Overall, the difference in inversion costs for faces compared to nonface stimuli was small but not statistically significant (b = 0.31, se = 0.16, 95% CI [- 0.01, 0.62], p = 0.06). Additionally, this did not systematically vary between the family of species (chimpanzee or monkey) or type of face stimuli (conspecific or heterospecific). Ultimately, it cannot be concluded that the face inversion effect is a reliable phenomenon in either chimpanzees or monkeys, suggesting that nonhuman primates may not use similar face-specific processing strategies as humans.

Improving sensitivity to eye gaze cues in autism using serious game technology: study protocol for a phase I randomised controlled trial.

INTRODUCTION: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by impairments in social communication. Core symptoms are deficits in social looking behaviours, including limited visual attention to faces and sensitivity to eye gaze cues. We designed an intervention game using serious game mechanics for adolescents with ASD. It is designed to train individuals with ASD to discover that the eyes, and shifts in gaze specifically, provide information about the external world. We predict that the game will increase understanding of gaze cues and attention to faces. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The Social Games for Adolescents with Autism (SAGA) trial is a preliminary, randomised controlled trial comparing the intervention game with a waitlist control condition. 34 adolescents (10-18 years) with ASD with a Full-Scale IQ between 70 and 130 and a minimum second grade reading level, and their parents, will be randomly assigned (equally to intervention or the control condition) following baseline assessments. Intervention participants will be instructed to play the computer game at home on a computer for ~30 min, three times a week. All families are tested in the lab at baseline and approximately 2 months following randomisation in all measures. Primary outcomes are assessed with eye tracking to measure sensitivity to eye gaze cues and social visual attention to faces; secondary outcomes are assessed with questionnaires to measure social skills and autism-like behaviours. The analyses will focus on evaluating the feasibility, safety and preliminary effectiveness of the intervention. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: SAGA is approved by the Institutional Review Board at Pennsylvania State University (00005097). Findings will be disseminated via scientific conferences and peer-reviewed journals and to participants via newsletter. The intervention game will be available to families in the control condition after the full data are collected and if analyses indicate that it is effective. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02968225.

Third party observer effect: Application to autistic traits in the normal population.

This study examined how autistic traits relate to third-party observation during neuropsychological testing. Using a counterbalanced within-subjects design (N = 61), we manipulated the absence and presence of third-party observation when administering alternate forms of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test to individuals with variable autistic traits. Bayesian linear mixed effects modeling was used to examine the interaction between autistic traits and third-party observation on test performance. With more autistic traits, susceptibility to a third-party observer decreased on the dependent variables. The third-party observer effect may therefore depend on the social awareness exhibited by the examinee.

The effects of age on the learning and forgetting of primacy, middle, and recency components of a multi-trial word list.

The serial position effect reveals that recall of a supraspan list of words follows a predictable pattern, whereby words at the beginning (primacy) and end (recency) of a list are recalled more easily than words in the middle. This effect has typically been studied using single list-learning trials, but in neuropsychology, multi-trial list-learning tests are more commonly used. The current study examined trends in learning for primacy, middle, and recency effects across multiple trials in younger and older age cohorts. Participants were 158 volunteers, including 79 adults aged 17-36 ("younger" group) and 79 adults aged 54-89 years ("older" group). Each participant completed four learning trials and one delayed (5-10 min) recall trial from the Memory Assessment Scales. Scores were divided into primacy (first four words), middle (middle four words), and recency (final four words) scores for all trials. For list acquisition, mixed effects modeling examined the main effects of and interactions between learning slope (logarithmic), age group, and serial position. Rate of learning increased logarithmically over four trials and varied by serial position, with growth of middle and recency word acquisition increasing more rapidly than recall of primacy words; this interaction did not differ by age group. Delayed retention differed according to age group and serial position; both older and younger adults demonstrated similar retention for primacy words, but older adults showed reduced retention for middle and recency words. Although older adults acquired less information across learning trials, the reason for this reduced acquisition was related to initial learning, not to rate of learning over time. Older compared to younger adults were less efficient at transferring middle and recency words from short-term to long-term memory.

The effectiveness and unique contribution of neuropsychological tests and the δ latent phenotype in the differential diagnosis of dementia in the uniform data set.

OBJECTIVE: Two main approaches to the interpretation of cognitive test performance have been utilized for the characterization of disease: evaluating shared variance across tests, as with measures of severity, and evaluating the unique variance across tests, as with pattern and error analysis. Both methods provide necessary information, but the unique contributions of each are rarely considered. This study compares the 2 approaches on their ability to differentially diagnose with accuracy, while controlling for the influence of other relevant demographic and risk variables. METHOD: Archival data requested from the NACC provided clinical diagnostic groups that were paired to 1 another through a genetic matching procedure. For each diagnostic pairing, 2 separate logistic regression models predicting clinical diagnosis were performed and compared on their predictive ability. The shared variance approach was represented through the latent phenotype δ, which served as the lone predictor in 1 set of models. The unique variance approach was represented through raw score values for the 12 neuropsychological test variables comprising δ, which served as the set of predictors in the second group of models. RESULTS: Examining the unique patterns of neuropsychological test performance across a battery of tests was the superior method of differentiating between competing diagnoses, and it accounted for 16-30% of the variance in diagnostic decision making. CONCLUSION: Implications for clinical practice are discussed, including test selection and interpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record