Kosslyn Laboratory MiniCog and MiniCog Rapid Assessment Battery (MRAB)

MiniCog.prc and MiniCogWriter make up a software package (just "MiniCog," for short) for scripting psychological tasks to run (for now) on a Palm OS PDA (personal digital assistant). (A version for Windows Mobile "Pocket PCs" is in progress; other versions may be developed.) The MiniCog Rapid Assessment Battery is a package of nine short cognitive tests (in the domains of attention, executive function, and problem-solving) that runs in MiniCog. For a description of the software and MRAB tests, please see the two articles linked below (pdf files that will open with Adobe Reader, a free application).

Shephard, J. M., and Kosslyn, S. M. (2005). The MiniCog Rapid Assessment Battery: Developing a "blood pressure cuff for the mind." Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 76(6, Suppl.), B192-B197.

Shephard, J. M., Kho, S., Chen, J., and Kosslyn, S. M. (2006). MiniCog: A method for administering psychological tests and experiments on a handheld personal digital assistant. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 648-655

MiniCog and MRAB are still under development; however, we are distributing limited free licenses to other investigators conducting academic research. If you are interested, please download, print, and sign 2 copies of the license agreement, and mail both copies, with a brief cover letter describing your proposed research, to:

If the licensing office approves (they usually do, or will contact you with questions), we will then send you the software as well as an executed copy of the agreement.

pdb2csv (for Windows and for Mac OSX) is free program for converting PDB (palm database) files into CSV (aka comma-delimited text) files and vice versa.

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