Short-form alternatives to the judgment of line orientation test

The Judgment of Line Orientation Test (JLO; Benton, Hamsher, Varney, and Spreen, 1983) is frequently used as a motor-free method of evaluating visuospatial processing but can be time-consuming to administer. We investigated the internal consistency, validity, and utility of two parallel JLO short forms in a mixed clinical sample of 386 patients. Mean scores were equivalent, and correlational analyses supported the internal consistency and validity of both short forms. When compared to the standard JLO, the odd- and even-item short forms demonstrated good sensitivity, specificity, overall hit rate and predicted positive and negative accuracy. We conclude that the JLO short forms possess sufficient internal consistency, validity, and utility for serial assessment in research studies. The JLO short forms may potentially be used in clinical screening situations by applying a single cut-off score to differentiate levels of performance. However, more detailed clinical use of these JLO short forms will necessitate collection of normative data in order to generate accurate percentile rankings.