Lack of Practice Effects on Neuropsychological Tests as Early Cognitive Markers of Alzheimer Disease?

Performance on many cognitive and neuropsychological tests may be improved by prior exposure to testing stimuli and procedures. These beneficial practice effects can have a significant impact on test performance when conventional neuropsychological tests are administered at test–retest intervals of weeks, months or years. Many recent investigations have sought to determine changes in cognitive function over periods of minutes or hours (e.g., before and after anesthesia) using computerized tests. However, the effects of practice at such brief test–retest intervals has not been reported. The current study sought to determine the magnitude of practice effects in a group of 113 individuals assessed with an automated cognitive test battery on 4 occasions in 1 day. Practice effects were evident both between and within assessments, and also within individual tests. However, these effects occurred mostly between the 1st and 2nd administration of the test battery, with smaller, nonsignificant improvements observed between the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th administrations. On the basis of these results, methodological and statistical strategies that may aid in the differentiation of practice effects from drug-induced cognitive changes are proposed. (JINS, 2003, 9, 419–428.)

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Neuropsychological tests accurately predict incident Alzheimer disease after 5 and 10 years

Neurology ◽

10.1212/01.wnl.0000163773.21794.0b ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 64 (11) ◽

pp. 1853-1859 ◽

Cited By ~ 147

Author(s):

M. C. Tierney ◽

C. Yao ◽

A. Kiss ◽

I. McDowell

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer Disease ◽

Neuropsychological Tests

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Atypical Repetition in Daily Conversation on Different Days for Detecting Alzheimer Disease: Evaluation of Phone-Call Data From Regular Monitoring Service

JMIR Mental Health ◽

10.2196/16790 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. e16790

Author(s):

Yasunori Yamada ◽

Kaoru Shinkawa ◽

Keita Shimmei

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer Disease ◽

Neuropsychological Tests ◽

Phone Call ◽

Linguistic Features ◽

Regular Monitoring ◽

Phone Calls ◽

Speech Data ◽

Monitoring Service ◽

Specific Number

Background Identifying signs of Alzheimer disease (AD) through longitudinal and passive monitoring techniques has become increasingly important. Previous studies have succeeded in quantifying language dysfunctions and identifying AD from speech data collected during neuropsychological tests. However, whether and how we can quantify language dysfunction in daily conversation remains unexplored. Objective The objective of this study was to explore the linguistic features that can be used for differentiating AD patients from daily conversations. Methods We analyzed daily conversational data of seniors with and without AD obtained from longitudinal follow-up in a regular monitoring service (from n=15 individuals including 2 AD patients at an average follow-up period of 16.1 months; 1032 conversational data items obtained during phone calls and approximately 221 person-hours). In addition to the standard linguistic features used in previous studies on connected speech data during neuropsychological tests, we extracted novel features related to atypical repetition of words and topics reported by previous observational and descriptive studies as one of the prominent characteristics in everyday conversations of AD patients. Results When we compared the discriminative power for AD, we found that atypical repetition in two conversations on different days outperformed other linguistic features used in previous studies on speech data during neuropsychological tests. It was also a better indicator than atypical repetition in single conversations as well as that in two conversations separated by a specific number of conversations. Conclusions Our results show how linguistic features related to atypical repetition across days could be used for detecting AD from daily conversations in a passive manner by taking advantage of longitudinal data.

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Neuropsychological Profiles Differentiate Alzheimer Disease from Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Dementia in an Autopsy-Defined Cohort

Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders ◽

10.1159/000477344 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 44 (1-2) ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Liliana Ramirez-Gomez ◽

Ling Zheng ◽

Bruce Reed ◽

Joel Kramer ◽

Dan Mungas ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer Disease ◽

Vascular Dementia ◽

Neuropsychological Tests ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Word Association ◽

Positive Likelihood Ratio ◽

Operating Characteristics ◽

Clinical Dementia Rating ◽

Or Education ◽

Learning Test

Background/Aims: The aim of this study was to assess the ability of neuropsychological tests to differentiate autopsy-defined Alzheimer disease (AD) from subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD). Methods: From a sample of 175 cases followed longitudinally that underwent autopsy, we selected 23 normal controls (NC), 20 SIVD, 69 AD, and 10 mixed cases of dementia. Baseline neuropsychological tests, including Memory Assessment Scale word list learning test, control oral word association test, and animal fluency, were compared between the three autopsy-defined groups. Results: The NC, SIVD, and AD groups did not differ by age or education. The SIVD and AD groups did not differ by the Global Clinical Dementia Rating Scale. Subjects with AD performed worse on delayed recall (p < 0.01). A receiver operating characteristics analysis comparing the SIVD and AD groups including age, education, difference between categorical (animals) versus phonemic fluency (letter F), and the first recall from the word learning test distinguished the two groups with a sensitivity of 85%, specificity of 67%, and positive likelihood ratio of 2.57 (AUC = 0.789, 95% CI 0.69-0.88, p < 0.0001). Conclusion: In neuropathologically defined subgroups, neuropsychological profiles have modest ability to distinguish patients with AD from those with SIVD.

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A Lack of Practice Effects on Memory Tasks Predicts Conversion to Alzheimer Disease in Patients With Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology ◽

10.1177/0891988720944244 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 089198872094424

Author(s):

Maria Stefania De Simone ◽

Roberta Perri ◽

Marta Rodini ◽

Lucia Fadda ◽

Massimo De Tollis ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽

Alzheimer Disease ◽

Test Performance ◽

Medial Temporal Lobe ◽

Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽

Practice Effects ◽

Large Set ◽

Neuropsychological Evaluations

The aim of the current study was to test the accuracy of practice effects, that is, improvement in test performance due to repeated neuropsychological evaluations, in identifying patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) at greater risk of conversion to Alzheimer disease (AD). For this purpose, we conducted a longitudinal study of 54 patients diagnosed with a-MCI at the first assessment and followed-up for 4 years. During this time, 18 patients converted to AD. Baseline and 6- to 12-month follow-up performances on a large set of neuropsychological tests were analyzed to determine their diagnostic ability to predict later conversion to dementia. Results demonstrate that a lack of practice effects on episodic memory tests is an accurate prognostic indicator of late conversion to AD in a-MCI patients. In fact, even though the performance of both groups was substantially comparable at the baseline evaluation, stable a-MCI patients greatly improved their memory performance at retest after 6 to 12 months; instead, scores of converter a-MCI remained stable or decreased passing from baseline to follow-up. Standardized z-change scores on memory tasks, which were computed as a reliable measure of performance change, classified group membership with very good overall accuracy, which was higher than the classification of converter and stable a-MCIs provided by baseline or follow-up scores. We hypothesize that the lack of practice effects on memory tasks mirrors the early involvement of medial temporal lobe areas in converter a-MCI that are fundamental for the consolidation of new memory traces.

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