MOVEMENT ASSESSMENT BATTERY FOR CHILDREN-SECOND EDITION: THEORETICAL ADEQUACY OF A MOTOR ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENT

ABSTRACT Objective: To investigate the adequacy of the theoretical model of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (MABC-2) instrument. Methods: 582 children, of both sexes, aged between 3 and 5 years and residents in the city of Maringá (state of Paraná, Southern Brazil) participated in the study. Data were collected from May/2014 to June/2015 and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The evidence obtained from exploratory factor analysis indicated the presence of two factors, which was the option that best fitted the explanatory model. Hence, it was necessary to regroup the motor tasks of the dimensions “Aiming & catching” and “Balance” into only one dimension. It is noteworthy that the “Bicycle trail” motor task did not fit the model, as it presented a low and negative factor load in the analyzed dimensions. In the confirmatory factor analysis, adequate adjustment indices were observed for the tested model, which confirmed the non-classification of the “Bicycle trail” motor task in the original dimension. Conclusions: After removing the “Bicycle trail” motor task, the adjusted two-factor model seems to be the most appropriate to assess the motor performance of children participating in the study.

Transtorno do Desenvolvimento da Coordenação: desconhecido por pais e professores

Resumo O estudo teve como objetivo analisar dificuldades de aprendizagem sob a perspectiva dos transtornos das habilidades motoras, a partir da percepção de pais e de professores considerando o comportamento motor, emocional, acadêmico e atividades diárias de crianças com provável Transtorno do Desenvolvimento da Coordenação (TDC). Participaram 42 pais, 32 professores e 42 pré-escolares. Como instrumentos foram utilizados o Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) e questionários de percepção dos pais e dos professores sobre o desenvolvimento da criança. Os dados foram analisados usando o teste Shapiro Wilk, Wilcoxon, “U” de Mann-Whitney e Regressão Logística Binária. Os resultados demonstraram que professores percebem melhor as dificuldades nas habilidades motoras das crianças com persistência do TDC (pTDC) ou variação do TDC (vTDC) e percebem melhor as dificuldades emocionais, acadêmicas e de atividades diárias. Conclui-se que os professores percebem melhor as dificuldades apresentadas por crianças com pTDC e a variação no diagnóstico do transtorno interfere na percepção da dificuldade motora das crianças.

Hypo-perfusion and hyper-resistance affect different cognitive functions

Cognitive impairment and dementia are conventionally categorised according to their causative disease, such as Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease. Cognitive impairments of different aetiologies often share pathological cerebral blood circulation patterns, characterised by perfusion and resistance. Here, we show that these two features are associated with distinct types of cognitive impairment. Using carotid ultrasonography, we evaluated the circulation status of individuals with little to no subjective cognitive symptoms. We assessed individuals’ cognitive status using the Frontal Assessment Battery for executive function and Mini-Mental State Examination for learning and memory. Regression analysis showed that the hyper-resistance and hypo-perfusion components predicted the Frontal Assessment Battery and Mini Mental State Examination scores, respectively. These results are consistent with previous findings of hyper-resistance being associated with atherosclerosis, which disproportionately affects the frontal lobe and contributes to executive function impairments; meanwhile, hypo-perfusion disproportionately affects temporal lobe functions associated with learning and memory. We propose a novel concept that cognitive impairments fall into two subtypes regardless of the brain disease: hyper-resistance and hypo-perfusion subtypes. As these subtypes can be measured noninvasively and are treatable, this distinction would help design preventive and therapeutic strategies for dementia.

A-186 Preliminary Development of an Embedded Measure of Effort on the Memory Module of the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB)

Objective The Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB) is an integrated neuropsychological battery for assessing cognitive skills in adults. The current study utilizes performance validity tests (PVTs) to interpret poor effort for scores on the NAB. Method Sample consisted of 306 adult civil litigants referred for a neuropsychological evaluation aged 18 to 85 years with a mean age of 43 years. Education ranged from 8 to 20 years with a mean of 14 years of education. Poor effort was denoted by “failing” 2 or more PVTs versus individuals who did not fail any PVTs (“pass”). Results Independent-samples t-tests were run to determine if there were differences in NAB Memory Module scores between the “pass” and “fail” groups. Multiple scores on NAB Memory Module yielded statistically significant differences. Scores were then used in subsequent ROC curve analyses to determine appropriate cutoff scores with an intent to maximally balance sensitivity and specificity. ROC curve analyses were favorable (i.e., AUC > 0.70) and yielded cut scores for List Learning A Immediate Recall (≤ 18), List Learning A Short Delayed Recall (≤ 6), List Learning A Long Delayed Recall (≤ 4), Shape Learning Immediate Recognition (≤ 15), Daily Living Memory Immediate Recall (≤ 39), Daily Living Memory Delayed Recall (≤ 11), List Learning A Discriminability (≤ 7), and Name/Address/Phone Delayed Recall (≤ 4) with sensitivity values ranging from 0.70 to 0.78 and specificity values ranging from 0.70 to 0.84. Conclusion Results provide preliminary evidence of suggested cutoffs to identify suspected poor effort for various scores in the NAB Memory Module.