Operant test battery performance in children: correlation with IQ.

The relationship between intelligence and money-(nickel-)reinforced operant behaviors were compared in 115 six year old children. The Operant Test Battery (OTB) consists of tasks thought to engender responses dependent upon specific brain functions that include motivation, color and position discrimination, learning, short-term memory, and time estimation. OTB endpoints were compared with Full Scale, Verbal and Performance IQ scores. Highly significant correlations were noted between several OTB measures (e.g., color and position discrimination accuracy) and IQ scores, but not in others (e.g., motivation task response rate). The results demonstrate the relevance of these measures as metrics of important brain functions. Additionally, since laboratory animals can readily perform these same tasks, these kinds of behaviors in laboratory animals should be useful in studying the effects of neuroactive/neurotoxic compounds on aspects of cognitive function in animals and in predicting adverse effects of such agents on related brain functions in humans.