Using EXCEL to identify errors of transposition and omission in the ACE-R

This article refers to a particular test on the ACE-R where the participants are requested to spell the word 'world' (or variants) backwards ie 'dlrow'.

There are four types of errors that can occur with this task:

1. Omission (only) errors occur where one letter is omitted in an otherwise correct spelling e.g. dlro (where 'w' is omitted')
2. Transposition (only) errors occur where adjacent letters are swapped e.g. drlow (where the letters 'r' and 'l' have been reversed)
3. Combinations of the two may also occur such as an omission error followed by a transposition error e.g. dolw where the 'r' was omitted to form 'dlow' and then the 'l' and 'o' were reversed.
4. The other combination of errors is when a transposition error is followed by am omission error e.g. lrwo where the 'w' and 'o' were transposed and then the 'd' omitted

Note that one or more of the above errors can yield the same response e.g. dlrw can be both the result an omission error ('o' omitted) and also a transposition (of 'o' and 'r') followed by an omission (of 'o').

This spreadsheet flags in Sheet 1 each of the above four errors for items from participants attempting to spell a five letter word backwards (e.g. 'dlrow') and works out a total error score with an error count of two given for each combined (omission/swap) mistake. The inputted items are in the green sections of columns A and H. The target item needs to be entered into cell M1 in Sheet 2. The spreadsheet can be easily adapted to handle target words of other lengths. The five columns (B to F) can be copied and pasted and placed in empty columns immediately to the right of the columns of items whose error scores we wish to compute.