Prilozi, Odd. biol. med. nauki, MANU, XXX, 1, s. 167‡178 (2009) Contributions, Sec. Biol. Med. Sci., MASA, XXX, 1, p. 167–178 (2009) ISSN 0351–3254 UDK: 159.952.07 COMPARISON OF VISUAL AND EMOTIONAL CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE TEST RELATED TO SEQUENCE OF PRESENTATION, GENDER AND AGE Markovska-Simoska Silvana, 1 Pop-Jordanova Nada 2 1 Bioinformatics Unit, ICEIM, Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, R. Macedonia 2 Paediatric Clinic, Faculty of Medicine, University of Skopje, R. Macedonia A b s t r a c t. Continous Performance Tests (CPTs) form a group of paradigms for the evaluation of attention and, to a lesser degree, the response inhibition (or disin- hibition) component of executive control. The object of this study was to compare per- formance on a CPT using both visual and emotional tasks in 46 normal adult subjects. In particular, it was to examine the effects of the type of task (VCPT or ECPT), sequ- ence of presentation, and gender/age influence on performance as measured errors of omission, errors of commission, reaction time and variation of reaction time. From the results we can assume that there are significantly worse performance parameters for ECPT than VCPT tasks, with a probable explanation of the influence of emotional stimuli on attention and information-processing and no significant effect of order of presentation and gender on performance. Significant differences with more omission errors for older groups were obtained, showing better attention in younger subjects. Key words: VCPT, ECPT, omission errors, commission errors, reaction time, variation of reaction time, normal adults. Introduction A Continuous Performance Task/Test, or CPT, is a neuropsychological test which measures a person's sustained and selective attention and impulsivity.