The Arizona Cognitive Test Battery for Down Syndrome: Test-Retest Reliability and Practice Effects.

Edgin et al. (2017) checked if the Arizona Cognitive Test Battery (ACTB) gives steady scores when used again.

They gave the full battery twice to youth with Down syndrome. The gap between tests was long enough to see if simply taking the tests once made scores jump.

Most ACTB sub-tests stayed almost the same on round two. Memory, motor-planning, attention, and behavior-control tasks showed only tiny practice effects.

The authors say the battery is ready for repeated use in drug or training trials.

Dargue et al. (2021) pooled 125 single-case ABA studies in Down syndrome and found medium gains in communication and challenging behavior. Their review needed tools that could be given over and over without inflation—exactly what O et al. show the ACTB can do.

Whitehouse et al. (2014) tracked dementia in adults with Down syndrome for 14 years. They relied on the Dementia Questionnaire for Persons with Mental Retardation (DMR) because it too holds up with repeat use. Together, the two studies suggest picking age-matched stable tools: ACTB for youth, DMR for adults.

Tudella et al. (2011) charted infant motor delays with the AIMS and saw the same slow-but-steady pattern. All three teams chose measures that do not spike just because the client practiced, reinforcing the value of low-practice-effect instruments across the Down syndrome lifespan.

If you run skill programs or medication checks, you need clean data. The ACTB lets you test, teach, then test again without score bumps that hide real progress. Swap it in when your current cognitive tasks show big second-time jumps.