Self-report measure

Cognitive Failures

Cognitive Failures uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Cognitive Failures.

You learn how often everyday slips of memory and attention happen to you.

For anyone who often forgets names, misplaces things or loses their train of thought.

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Report and PDF $4, paid after you finish.

Your answers stay private.

It comes from cognitive psychology research on everyday lapses in memory, attention and action.

Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.

What this test is

Welcome. Cognitive Failures uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Cognitive Failures.

The measure

It has 10 items, each answered on a 5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate) scale.

International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org). Source scale: Broadbent et al., 1982.

At a glance

Items

Response scale

5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate)

Est. time

~1 min

Access

Free to take · Full report and PDF for $4, or $2 to repeat

What it measures

Ten statements describe everyday lapses: forgetting why one went from one part of the house to another, failing to notice signposts, forgetting names, misplacing things, daydreaming when one should be listening, and bumping into people or objects. Such slips happen to everyone; the scale measures how often.

Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald and Parkes (1982) developed the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire to measure proneness to everyday failures of perception, memory and action, and found that the tendency was a stable individual difference related to vulnerability to stress. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and parallel that measure.

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe more frequent lapses of attention and memory in daily life; lower scores describe fewer. The score reflects self-perceived lapses, which can rise temporarily with stress, fatigue or low mood.

The scale is used in research on attention, stress and accidents, and for self-reflection. On this site, the ADHD Traits Scale describes related attention difficulties, the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS v1.1) follows diagnostic criteria, and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) measures stress that can increase everyday lapses.

Validity evidence

Items assess self-reported failures of perception, memory, and motor functioning in everyday life, constructs with established convergent validity with attention measures, accident proneness, and stress outcomes (Broadbent et al., 1982).

Example item

“Get confused easily.”

Very InaccurateModerately InaccurateNeither Accurate nor InaccurateModerately AccurateVery Accurate

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.

References

Broadbent, D. E., Cooper, P. F., FitzGerald, P., & Parkes, K. R. (1982). The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 21(1), 1-16.
Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. Personality Psychology in Europe, 7, 7-28.

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
Section	What it shows
Score	Your scale score, computed with the published scoring key.
Comparisons	How your scores compare with a published comparison group.

It is free to take, and the full report with a downloadable copy is $4.

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