There is an increasing demand for alternate-form neuropsychological tests that can be used in clinical trials with little risk of direct practice effect. Although the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test (BVMT) includes six equivalent alternate forms, its administration is limited to an immediate and 25-min delayed free-recall trial. We now present a revised version of the BVMT called the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R) that includes three learning trials, a 25-min delayed recall trial, and a delayed yes/no recognition task. A new scoring system, which accounts for the location of test stimuli as well as the accuracy of recall, is also introduced. Using these new administration and scoring procedures, we administered the BVMT-R to 261 neuropsychiatric patients and 456 normal healthy adults. The results indicated that the test has excellent interform reliability, and the construct and criterion-related validity of the test were supported in studies using clinical samples. Although the BVMT-R is not without its limitations, the test's brevity and alternate-form capacity make it a valuable instrument for serial neuropsychological assessments.We recently presented a newly developed, multiple-form test of Visuospatial memory called the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test (BVMT;. Modeled after the Visual Reproduction subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scales (Russell, 1975;1988;Wechsler 1945Wechsler , 1987, the test was created to provide a quick means of assessing visual memory, using multiple test forms. In its original version, the BVMT required patients to reproduce as many figures as possible from an array of six figures, which was presented for 10 s. A delayed recall trial was administered 25 min after the immediate recall trial. Our results demonstrated that the six BVMT forms are equivalent in difficulty and that the recall scores discriminate brain-injured patients from normal controls.

The relationship between measures of mood state and cognitive function was investigated in a sample of geriatric psychiatry inpatients. All were admitted to an urban hospital with varying degrees of cognitive impairment. Patients with diminishing negative affects and depressive symptoms during the course of hospitatization improved significantly on three cognitive tests, and half of the group members were no longer impaired according to their performance on a mental status exam. Correlations between cognition and mood-scale change scores were significant on tests emphasizing spatial processing and learning. Although the effects were modest in this heterogenous sample, the data demonstrate a significant influence of changing mood state on neuropsychological test performance.

This study examined the degree to which demographic variables, psychiatric diagnosis, depression rating, and neuropsychological test performance predict adaptive kitchen behavior in geriatric psychiatry patients and normal elderly volunteers. Amixed group of 27 participants including 8 normal volunteers and 19 geriatric psychiatry inpatients underwent psychiatric evaluation, neuropsychological testing, and a kitchen skills assessment conducted in a natural setting. Both depression and dementia were prevalent among patients. The kitchen skills assessment was abnormal in 69% of patients, compared to none of the normal volunteers. Estimated premorbid IQs, psychiatric diagnosis, and neuropsychological test scores significantly predicted the pass/fail status on the kitchen skills assessment, but there was no effect for age, education, gender, or depression. The discriminant function analysis classified 92% of cases, and the canonical correlation coefficient was .84. Of the neuropsychological tests employed in the study, two tests involving visuospatial processing and attention were retained in the discriminant function analysis. The results are consistent with previous studies that suggest that visuospatial tasks are more predictive of instrumental activities of daily living than are cognitive tasks emphasizing verbal and memory abilities. In addition, we conclude that neuropsychological test data are useful and valid for the purpose of guiding clinical judgments regarding activities of daily living in geriatric psychiatry patients.

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