Flash Cards as Cognitive Test

Project Infobox
Self researcher(s)	User:DG
Related tools	Anki, Spaced Repetition
Related topics	Tools for Cognitive Testing
Builds on project(s)	Spaced Listening, Spaced Repetition: A Cognitive QS Method for Knowledge Acquisition
Has inspired	Projects (0)

Flash cards are cards with question on one side and answers on opposite, used for memorization. Exist several computer apps that automate the process and have recorded a lot of data. I expected electronic flashcard data to be useful as a cognitive test so I started a project to analyze the data that Anki records. Turns out the project will teach users about learning and allow them to experiment with and optimize their own learning process. This project also encourages studying by illustrating success in detail, similar to gamification.

The project is a work in progress and much of the intended functionality is not yet working. I cannot yet guarantee that each of the goals will be all that useful to the end user. Project will take about ten thousand lines of code to complete, so I expect to burn out a few times before it is done. No AI or LLM was used in the making of this project.

Other Goals

Simply adding colorful plots that Anki does not already have will encourage studying. I have found several potential measures of psychology as well.

The goal of teaching is almost as easy to guarantee because analyzing the data requires delving into the learning process. This goal may actually be the most impactful.

Project will advise user on how to optimize their studying by comparing what actually happened with what would have happened if they had done something different, according to a machine learning model. Effects will be illustrated using Partial Dependence Plots and ICE.

To help user conduct experiments, project will compare one part of time series with another or progress on one set of cards with another. User may have to use another tool like Open Humans.

Confounders and Artifacts of Procedure

Any decent skill test will detect when subject is severely sick. For a test to be useful for optimization and experimentation, it must detect more subtle patterns. Statistical tests detect plenty of patterns in my data that are both subtle enough and clearly not generated by the same process as the rest of the data. Unfortunately, those patterns could easily be artifacts of the analysis or of the test taking process. Including all available variables that should NOT correlate with target in a machine learning model and then using resulting residual errors as the final test results should help, but not all variables that cause artifacts are available.

Some of the artifacts will differ between tests so comparing results from multiple tests may result in a single decent time series strongly dependent on skill. If these solutions are not enough, one of the tests may correlate and generalize to an established validated cognitive test. That would still allow experimentation on and optimization of a skill, but through a cognitive ability.

Cognitive Health Test

Everyone should track their cognitive ability as much as health-conscious people track their heartrate and exercise. Formal cognitive testing takes too much time and effect on daily life of the specific thing the cognitive test tests is often questioned. Skill trainers and testers like typing tutors have neither problem but do not necessarily generalize to cognition and health. Even if a skill test is useful for optimizing the skill, things like dependence on psychological factors may not make it a good cognitive test. The skill test must correlate with validated cognitive tests or obviously important health things. Wozniak of supermemo has found correlation between sleep and flash card skill.