title: Spanish validation of the Brief Assessment in Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.
abstract: Neurocognitive impairment is a core feature of schizophrenia and is closely associated with functional outcome. The importance of cognitive assessment is broadly accepted today, and an easy-to-use, internationality validated cognitive assessment tool is needed by researchers and in daily clinical practice. The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) has been validated in English, French, Japanese and Italian. It is as sensitive to cognitive dysfunction as a standard test battery, with the advantage of requiring less than 35minutes to complete. In our study, we tested the psychometric characteristics of a Spanish version of the BACS in 117 patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and 36 healthy controls. All BACS cognitive subtests discriminated between patients and controls (P<.001), and the concurrent validity between the BACS and a traditional neuropsychological test battery was similar to that reported in other languages. We conclude that the BACS can facilitate the comparison of the cognitive performance of patients with schizophrenia in many different countries.
authors.affiliation: Schizophrenia Clinic Program, Department of Psychiatry, Neuroscience Institute, Hospital Clinic de, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Segarra
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bernardo
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gutierrez
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Justicia
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fernadez-Egea
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Allas
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Safont
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Contreras
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gascon
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Soler-Insa
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Menchon
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Junque
authors.forename: R S E
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Keefe
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013030:Spain; D014175:Translating; D055815:Young Adult