(TIPS) Test of Information Processing Skills

BY RAYMOND E. WEBSTER

Here is a quick, reliable way to assess information processing skills in children and adults. Performance on the TIPS reflects executive functioning, working memory, auditory and visual processing, and ability to learn, retain, organize, and use new information. Appropriate for people between the ages of 5 and 90, the TIPS is useful in evaluating learning disabilities, brain injuries, and other cognitive difficulties.

Specifically, the TIPS tells you how individuals process information that's seen or heard; how much they retain (immediately and after a delay); how they retain it (in sequence or out of order); and how interference affects recall. It also provides an estimate of semantic fluency.

Individually administered in just 20 to 25 minutes, the TIPS is composed of the following subtests:

Visual and Auditory Modality

Letter strings are presented visually and orally, and the examinee is asked to recall the letters immediately, then after a counting task, and again after a sentence repetition task.

Delayed Recall

The examinee is asked to recall animals or fruits from the sentence repetition task.

Semantic Fluency

The examinee must generate word lists over one-minute spans, first orally and then in writing.

The test provides norm-referenced standard scores and percentile ranks for visual and auditory memory, under three recall conditions. Differences between sequential and nonsequential retention--often seen in students with learning difficulties--are also noted. In addition, error analyses (Proactive Inhibition and Auditory Intrusion) document the extent to which new information is lost or its retention is inhibited.

Brief and easy to administer, the TIPS quickly tells you how well a person processes visual and auditory information.