Brief Empirical Report Barriers to Repeated Assessment of Verbal Learning and Memory: A Comparison of International Shopping List Task and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test on Build-Up of Proactive Interference

Proactive interference (PI) that remains unidentified can confound the assessment of verbal learning, particularly when its effects vary from one population to another. The International Shopping List Task (ISLT) is a new measure that provides multiple forms that can be equated for linguistic factors across cultural groups. The aim of this study was to examine the build-up of PI on two measures of verbal learning—a traditional test of list learning (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, RAVLT) and the ISLT. The sample consisted of 61 healthy adults aged 18–40. Each test had three parallel forms, each recalled three times. Results showed that repeated administration of the ISLT did not result in significant PI effects, unlike the RAVLT. Although these PI effects, observed during short retest intervals, may not be as robust under normal clinical administrations of the tests, the results suggest that the choice of the verbal learning test should be guided by the knowledge of PI effects and the susceptibility of particular patient groups to this effect.