Authors’ response

Abstract

We thank Raina1 for his comment on our article on the use of computerized tests to evaluate psychomotor performance in children with SpLD2. He pointed out that the matching of the two groups for computer literacy was not done. We did, in fact, anticipate its potential influence on the study outcome at the time of designing the protocol. However, computer literacy is quite complex and involves the testing of at least six domains- MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, Operating Systems (Windows), internet and e-mail3. It would not have been possible to apply this to the age group we studied. Instruments for psychomotor tests until a few decades ago were actual playing cards (for example) that needed to be sorted by a child. The “computer” in our case was simply a means of putting multiple tests which were paper based in the past and, therefore, cumbersome to use, on a single platform for ease of use. The keyboard of Mindomatics™ instrument (M/s Sristek, Hyderabad, India) is very simple with very few keys and does not resemble a computer keyboard. Thus, Mindomatics™ is really not a computer in the true sense and testing for “computer literacy” would not only have been difficult and time consuming but also meaningless. All children were given training (3 sessions over 1 week) at baseline to acquaint them with the use of the keyboard and the various tests. This we believe addressed the issue of preconditioning across the groups adequately.