Table 1.

For Experiment 1, subjects within each experiment performed two back-to-back sessions of the traditional, full-length MST that used the Study-Test format and Old, Similar, and New responses.

Exp	Goal	Alternate Task Variant	LDI Corr
1	Establish base test-retest reliability	Same task	0.73
2	Effect of continuous format	Full length, continuous, OSN	0.73
3	Effect of old/new response	Full length, study-test, ON	0.49
4	Combined continuous + old/new	Full-length, continuous, ON	0.56
5a	Effect of selectively reducing number of trials	Reduced, study-test, OSN	0.75
5b	Trials	Reduced, continuous, OSN	0.69
6a	Effect of shifting to guided practice instructions/trials	5a with practice task instructions	0.73
6b	Instructions/trials	5b with practice task instructions	0.73
7	Viability in older adults	6b’s reduced, continuous OSN	0.69
8	Multiple repeat testing	4x testing of study-test, OSN	N/A

For Experiments 2–7, subjects performed the traditional MST as well as a task variant that differed in task format (study-test vs. continuous), response prompt (OSN: Old/Similar/New vs. ON: Old/New), and length. Experiments 1–6 used young adults and 7 tested the resulting optimized version of the MST (oMST) in older adults. Experiment 8 compared repeat testing using the same set of stimuli vs. different sets of stimuli. LDI Corr = Pearson correlation coefficients (r) for correlations between LDI from the traditional MST and from each alternate task variant.