title: Premorbid IQ influence on screening tests' scores in healthy patients and patients with cognitive impairment.
abstract: Cognitive screening tests are well-established tools for detecting cognitive impairment, but concerns regarding the influence of premorbid intelligence on patient's performance and cognitive status classification remain. Risk of inaccurate assessment especially affects the elders with high or low premorbid intelligence (who are more likely to be misclassified). The present study examines the influence of premorbid intelligence assessed by the TeLPI (an irregular words reading test) on 2 cognitive screening tests, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), in healthy participants and patients with cognitive impairments (mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease). Results show that premorbid IQ influences the MMSE and the MoCA scores in both the groups, predicting variance from 8.4% to 33.2%, according to test and group analyzed. Hence, we propose that whenever the MMSE or the MoCA is used, premorbid IQ evaluation should also be considered to ensure correct interpretation and classification.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal. laralves79@gmail.com
authors.forename: Lara
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Alves
authors.forename: Mário R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Simões
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Freitas
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Santana
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: Alzheimer disease; MMSE; MoCA; TeLPI; mild cognitive impairment; premorbid IQ