About the Trail Making Test
Trail Making is one of the simplest cognitive tests imaginable: a page with 25 numbered circles scattered randomly; draw a line connecting them in order, 1-2-3-...-25, as fast as you can. That is Part A, measuring processing speed and visual scanning.
Part B mixes 13 numbered circles (1-13) with 12 lettered circles (A-L) scattered on the page; the subject must alternate, drawing 1-A-2-B-3-C-...-12-L-13. Part B requires the same speed and scanning as Part A plus set-shifting (alternating between number and letter sequences) - an executive function. The "B minus A" score isolates the executive component.
Despite its simplicity, Trail Making has extraordinary clinical utility. It is sensitive to traumatic brain injury, dementia, ADHD, alcoholism, and frontal lobe lesions. Normative data spans ages 9 to 89. It is part of essentially every major neuropsychological battery (Halstead-Reitan, NAB, RBANS) and is administered millions of times per year worldwide. The 1944 original is public domain because it was developed by the US Army.
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Trail Making Test (1944): connect-the-dots in numerical (A) or alternating numerical-alphabetical (B) order. Original is graphical; we present it as a sequence-prediction task: given the partial path, identify the next item.
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Source
All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:
Army Individual Test Battery (1944). Manual of directions and scoring. Washington, DC: War Department.
Trail Making was developed by the US Army during WWII as part of the Army Individual Test of General Ability. The original Army form was public domain; Partington & Leiter's 1949 adaptation became the standard clinical version. Reitan (1958) integrated it into the Halstead-Reitan Battery.
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The Trail Making Test is a historical artifact. For a contemporary IQ score using modern norms, take our modern full IQ test.
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