Cognitive pediatric tele-assessment: a scoping review

Nestor Viñas-Guasch; Phoebe Si Qi Chia; Michelle Li-Mei Yap; Chiao-Yi Wu; S H Annabel Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1288021

Cognitive pediatric tele-assessment: a scoping review

Front Psychol. 2023 Dec 15:14:1288021. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1288021. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Nestor Viñas-Guasch^{1

2}, Phoebe Si Qi Chia¹, Michelle Li-Mei Yap³, Chiao-Yi Wu^{3

4}, S H Annabel Chen^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
² Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
³ Centre for Research in Child Development, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
⁴ Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
⁵ Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.

Abstract

Cognitive tele-assessment (CTA) adoption has increased considerably recently, in parallel with the maturation of the digital technologies that enable it, and the push to move assessment to the online format during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. This mode of assessment stems from remote assessment applications that originated in general tele-medicine, where it was typically used for patient screening as part of an intervention. The development of remote tele-medicine was later adapted for CTA in adult populations in tele-neuropsychiatry and tele-psychology and is increasingly applied in experimental research in cognitive science research with adult and pediatric populations, and for remote academic assessment. Compared to in-person assessment, CTA offers advantages such as decreasing time and logistic costs and facilitating the assessment of remote or special needs populations. However, given the novelty of CTA, its technical, methodological, and ethical issues remain poorly understood, especially in cases where methods for assessment of adults are used in pediatric populations. In the current paper, we provide a scoping review on the evolution of remote tele-assessment from the years 2000 to 2021, to identify its main themes, methodologies, and applications, and then focus on the issues of assessment in pediatric populations. Finally, we present recommendations on how to address the challenges previously mentioned.

Keywords: children; cognition; cognitive tele-assessment; pediatric; remote.

Publication types

Systematic Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was partly supported by Singapore’s National Research Foundation under the Science of Learning grant, ‘How do language mixes contribute to effective bilingualism and effective biliteracy in Singapore’ (NRF2016-SOL002-011) awarded to Suzy J. Styles with Co-Investigators, C-YW and SC, and Singapore’s Temasek Foundation grant awarded to C-YW with Co-Investigator, SC.