[Psychometric validation of the telephone memory test].
BACKGROUND
Several pathologies (i.e. Alzheimer's disease) that courses with memory alterations, appears in a context of impaired cognitive status and mobility. In recent years, several investigations were carried out in order to design short batteries that detect those subjects under risk of dementia. Some of this batteries were also design to be administrated over the telephone, trying to overcome the accessibility limitations of this patients.


METHODS
In this paper we present a battery (called Autotest de Memoria) essentially composed by episodic and semantic memory tests, administered both over the telephone and face to face. This battery was employed in the cognitive assessment of healthy controls and subjects diagnosed as probable Alzheimer's disease patients.


RESULTS
Results show the capability of this battery in order to discriminate patients and healthy controls, a great sensibility and specificity, and a nearly absolute parallelism of telephone and face to face administrations.


CONCLUSIONS
These data led us to claim the usefulness and practicality of our so called <<Autotest de Memoria>>.
Ortiz
T
T
Departamento de Psiquiatría y Psicología Médica, Facultad de Medicina UCM, Madrid, 28040, España.
Fernández
A
A
Martínez-Castillo
E
E
Maestú
F
F
Martínez-Arias
R
R
López-Ibor
J J
JJ
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006320:Hearing Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013689:Telephone
Validación psicométrica del Autotest Telefónico de Memoria.