title: Neuropsychological screening for cognitive impairment using computer-assisted tasks.
abstract: The aim of this study was to validate a computer-assisted screening battery for classifying patients into two groups, those with and without cognitive impairment. Participants were all patients referred to the neuropsychology clinics at four VA medical centers during a 1-year period. Patients meeting the study inclusionary criteria (N = 252) were administered the Neurobehavioral Evaluation System-3 (NES3) computer-assisted battery. A detailed neuropsychological examination was carried out by an experienced neuropsychologist, who diagnosed the patient as cognitively impaired or not impaired. The neuropsychologist's diagnosis was the gold standard. Recursive partitioning analyses yielded several classification procedures using the NES3 data to predict the gold standard These procedures produced a set of six NES3 tasks that provide good sensitivity and specificity in predicting di- agnosis. Sensitivity and specificity for the least random classification procedure were 0.87 and 0.67, respectively. The results suggest that computer-assisted screening methods are a promising means of triaging patients.
authors.affiliation: VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University, USA. rwhite@bu.edu
authors.forename: Roberta F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: White
authors.forename: Kenneth E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: James
authors.forename: Jennifer J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Vasterling
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Letz
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Marans
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Delaney
authors.forename: Maxine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krengel
authors.forename: Fredric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rose
authors.forename: Helena C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Kraemer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests