Applied Neuropsychology-Adult最新文献

Purpose: To assess whether performance in attention and executive functions evaluated with the Epitrack screening tool before surgery can differentiate memory and quality of life (QOL) profiles, and detect different post-surgical change patterns in these variables in patients with epilepsy.

Methods: This is a longitudinal study. Seventy-seven patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (mean age = 37.91) underwent a neuropsychological assessment before and one year after surgery. Epitrack, a screening tool that exclusively evaluates attention and executive functioning, was administered in the pre-surgical assessment, and verbal and visual memory and QOL were assessed before and after surgery.

Results: Patients with impaired Epitrack performance had poorer verbal and visual memory than those with intact Epitrack performance, regardless of the time point (for all, p < 0.0001). They also showed a post-surgical decline in immediate verbal recall (p = 0.04) and discriminability (p = 0.001). Patients with intact Epitrack performance did not exhibit this decline. Epitrack total score significantly contributed to 13 and 11% of the variance of post-surgical changes in immediate verbal recall and discriminability, respectively. Epitrack groups did not differ in QOL profiles or changes, but post-surgical immediate verbal recall improvements were related to post-surgical QOL improvements.

Conclusion: Our findings underline the utility of Epitrack screening tool to detect different patterns of verbal and visual memory dysfunction, as well as to predict post-surgical verbal memory decline in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Patients with lower pre-surgical Epitrack scores appear to be at increased risk for post-surgical memory decline.

The General Ability Measure for Adults (GAMA) is a brief nonverbal assessment of general intellectual ability. Presently, there is a lack of research involving the use of the GAMA in a high-functioning population. Aviation pilots (n = 59) were referred for a neuropsychological evaluation and were concluded to be cognitively intact. They were administered a battery that included the GAMA and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - 4th edition (WAIS-IV). A paired samples t-test revealed that IQ scores on the GAMA were significantly lower than IQ scores on the WAIS-IV, with WAIS-IV IQ being 7.54 points higher on average. Fisher's exact test determined there was significant disagreement in score classification between the tests, with individuals classified as Above Average on the WAIS-IV often being classified as Average on the GAMA. The GAMA appears to significantly underrepresent true IQ in both score and classification when compared to a more robust measure of intellectual assessment. Clinically, this suggests that IQ screeners, such as the GAMA, may not be appropriate for assessing patients who are suspected to be of higher premorbid functioning. Future research should expand on these results to assess the validity of verbal-based IQ screening measures in high-functioning populations.

Serious games aim to provide cognitive assessments that are more enjoyable and easier to self-administer, potentially leading to more frequent assessments. We carried out two studies examining the relationship between game-playing enjoyment, game difficulty, and cognitive (game) performance. In the first study, 16 participants played three serious games once a week over four weeks as part of an undergraduate course, but with relatively minor motivation in terms of course credits. In the second study, 14 participants played serious games over six sessions in a period of three weeks. Participants included graduate students receiving credit for the course project (a major component of the grade) and friends and family that they recruited. Performance in the more difficult tasks tended to improve over time in the second study, but not in the first. Participants from the first study showed an overall negative sentiment toward the games. However, participants from the second study enjoyed the majority of games except for the more difficult games that required players to temporarily hold and memorize information. Participants got significantly better in the more difficult working memory games, even though these games were less popular than the simpler games. Our interpretation of the results is that enjoyability is important in encouraging people to keep playing cognitive assessment games as time progresses, and that enjoyability helps in maintaining performance in easy games. Higher motivation on the other hand played a significant role in facilitating learning effects in difficult games as well as in maintaining enjoyability.

The purpose of this study was to establish psycholinguistic norms for 249 action pictures in Cantonese, a language with few norms available. We provide normative data for rated visual complexity, rated age of acquisition, name agreement, word frequency and rated familiarity in this study. Forty participants were recruited to participate in both timed picture naming and rating experiments. The linear mixed effect analysis revealed that familiarity, visual complexity, and name agreement were significant predictors of action naming in Cantonese. However, AoA did not show any significant effect on action naming, which is consistently observed in previous studies of action picture naming in Chinese. The possible explanation for null effect of AoA on naming latency are discussed. This set of psycholinguistic norms in Cantonese could serve as a valuable resource for future psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic and clinical studies in Cantonese.

A common question in the neuropsychological testing of patients with Alzheimer's Disease is whether or not patients should be tested in the presence of their spouses. We addressed this issue by assessing the neuropsychological performances of Alzheimer's Disease patients in the presence or absence of spouses. Results showed no significant differences between patients' performances in the presence or absence of spouses on tests assessing general cognitive abilities, episodic memory, working memory, inhibition and flexibility. No significant differences were observed regarding either anxiety or depression in patients when tested alone, compared to when spouses were attending. However, patients demonstrated higher verbal fluency when tested alone compared to when spouses attended. Clinicians may carry out neuropsychological assessment in the presence or absence of spouses, except when assessing verbal fluency. In such cases, clinicians should privilege testing patients alone or, if spouses attend the test, take into account this variable when interpreting patients' performances.

Aim: The goal of this study was to determine the discriminant potential of the Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT) in older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment multiple domain (mdMCI) and Alzheimer's Disease Dementia (ADD; mild subtype) as compared to older adults with Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD).Materials and methods: We administered RCFT in 608 older adults, dividing them in three groups (217 individuals with SCD; 304 mdMCI population; 106 people with mild ADD, aged 50-90 years; M = 66.9, SD = 8.4) and a mean education of 10.20 (SD 4.3) years.Results: RCFT subtests have excellent discriminant validity, mainly between people with SCD and those with mild ADD. However, its discriminant validity in detecting older adults with SCD among mdMCI population is still questionable.Discussion: The use of RFCT in discriminating older adults with SCD from those with mild ADD both in research as well as in clinical practice is highly recommended.

Cued recall taps amnesia of "the hippocampal type" as typically found in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Studies investigating the validity of cued recall measures in AD have typically been conducted in research settings. The Category Cued Memory Test (CCMT-48) measures learning/memory using the same categories during encoding and acquisition. The aim of this study was to investigate how frequently impairments were found on the CCMT-48 mild AD patients from a memory clinic (N = 77). We used a case-oriented approach where individually observed scores were compared to expected scores derived from regressions-based normative data. We also investigated if CCMT-48 performances differed in patients with mild AD and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) (N = 90). The results showed a significantly higher frequency of impairment in the AD group as compared to the DLB group for scores below 10th percentile-estimate (impaired: AD 88%; DLB 69%) and 5th percentile-estimate (impaired: AD 82%; DLB 53%). In conclusion, a very high frequency of impairment of a picture-based cued recall test in AD patients (very high sensitivity) in a memory clinic setting. However, specificity is not optimal since impairments also frequently occurred in DLB where memory problems could be assumed to be part of attentional deficits and poor retrieval strategies.

Objective The objective was to explore the validity and reliability of the Picture-Based Memory Impairment Screen (PMIS) assessment tool in stroke patients and to provide an objective basis for its application in China.Methods: A total of 30 stroke patients in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine were assessed using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and the PMIS. The results were evaluated by content validity, simultaneous validity, consistency test of instruments of assessment, inter-scorer reliability, and retest reliability.Results: The correlation coefficient between each item score and total score of PMIS was between 0.422 and 0.778 (p < 0.05), showing good content validity. The total score of PMIS was moderately positively correlated with the MMSE short-term memory score (p < 0.001), highly positively correlated with the MMSE long-term memory score and retrospective memory score (p < 0.001), and highly positively correlated with the MoCA long-term memory score, memory index and total score (p < 0.001), indicating good criterion validity. The consistency test of the two instruments of assessment showed that a PMIS ≤ 5 was used as the demarcation score for dementia, and it was tested for consistency with the MMSE dementia score of stroke patients, and the Kappa value was 0.81 (p < 0.001). The inter-scorer reliability and retest reliability were good (inter-scorer reliability intra-group correlation coefficient (ICC) >0.95; retest reliability ICC 0.904).Conclusion: The PMIS was a reliable and valid assessment tool, which can be used as memory impairment screening tool for stroke patients in China.

We examined whether significant scatter in WAIS-IV GAI will reduce its validity to predict performance on WMS-IV indexes. Participants were 330 individuals with neurological, psychiatric, or neurodevelopmental disorders and 59 referrals who were found to be free of a diagnosable disorder. For VCI > PRI, 59.32% were significant at p < .05 and 12.29% were >22 points. For VCI < PRI, 48.37% were significant at p < .05 and 7.19% were >22 points. Inter-subtest scatter across GAI subtests indicated 82.26% of individuals had a significant scatter range and 13.88% had an unusually large range (≥8). For the VCI, 49.10% had significant scatter (≥3) and 12.08% had an unusually large scatter range (≥5). On the PRI, 43.19% had a significant scatter range (≥4) and 12.85% had an unusually large degree of scatter (≥6). Moderation analyses revealed GAI was a significant predictor of each WMS-IV index. The interaction term of GAI with GAI scatter was not significant for any indexes, indicating that regression equations for predicting WMS-IV scores from GAI did not vary significantly across levels of scatter. Estimation of WMS-IV indexes from the GAI is justified even when significant VCI-PRI discrepancies are present and there is unusual variability across the GAI subtests.

Understanding non-pathological cognitive aging processes remains a public health goal and research priority. Age-associated cognitive aging is a normal human process, however, individual differences may aid in the mitigation of cognitive aging. Assessing the role of certain protective factors (i.e., age, marital status, and gender) that influence age-related cognitive aging is imperative to slow down the progression of unwarranted cognitive aging. Participants aged over 18 (N = 123; 97 females and 26 males) recruited from Sydney, New South Wales, and Gold Coast, Queensland, completed an online neuropsychological test battery with computer-administered tasks, assessing impulsivity and working memory, which were entered as dependent variables. A 3(Age Group: 18-27 years; 28-61 years; 62+ years) x2(Marital Status: married; single) x2(Gender: male; female) Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) design was used to examine the relationship between age, marital status, and gender (entered as independent variables) on cognitive aging. Participants' total scores from psychometrically sound measures assessing depressive symptomology, personal wellbeing, resilience, and social network engagement, were entered as covariates. No significant effects were found from the independent variables included in the MANCOVA. A significant covariate effect for resilience and depressive symptomology on impulsivity was found. A multiple regression analysis was performed on the significant covariates, and revealed increased resilience and depressive symptomology to significantly predict greater impulsivity.