Cut-off Scores of a Brief Neuropsychological Battery (NBACE) for Spanish Individual Adults Older than 44 Years Old

Abstract

The neuropsychological battery used in Fundació ACE (NBACE) is a relatively brief, and easy to administer, test battery that was designed to detect cognitive impairment in the adulthood. The NBACE includes measures of cognitive information processing speed, orientation, attention, verbal learning and memory, language, visuoperception, praxis and executive functions. The aim of the present study was to establish the cut-off scores for impairment for different levels of age and education that could be useful in the cognitive assessment of Spanish subjects who are at risk for cognitive impairment, especially dementia. Data from 1018 patients with a mild dementia syndrome, and 512 cognitively healthy subjects, older than 44 years, from the Memory Clinic of Fundació ACE (Barcelona, Spain) were analyzed. In the whole sample, cut-off scores and sensitivity/specificity values were calculated for six conditions after combining 3 age ranges (44 to 64; 65 to 74; and older than 74 years old) by 2 educational levels (until Elementary school; and more than Elementary school). Moreover, general cut-offs are reported for Catalan and Spanish speakers. The results showed that most of NBACE tests reached good sensitivity and specificity values, except for Ideomotor praxis, Repetition and Verbal Comprehension tests, which had a ceiling effect. Word List Learning from the Wechsler Memory Scale-III and Semantic Verbal Fluency were the most useful tests to discriminate between cognitively healthy and demented subjects. The NBACE has been shown to be a useful tool able to detect cognitive impairment, especially dementia, in older than 44 years Spanish persons.

Personality Factors and Subjective Cognitive Decline: The FACEHBI Cohort

“…SCD was defined as (a) age older than 49 years, (b) a score of ≥8 on the Spanish modified questionnaire of Memory Failures of Everyday (MFE-30) [25], (c) a score of ≥27 on the Spanish version of the MMSE, (d) a score of 0 on the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) Scale [26], (e) a performance within the average range expected for age and educational level on the Fundació ACE Neuropsychological Battery (NBACE) [27,28], (f) were literate, and (g) had completed the self-administered questionnaire ZKPQ.…”

Factores asociados al rendimiento académico en adultos - Factors associated with academic achievement in adults

“…Puntuaciones estandarizadas del subtest de semejanzas, del WAIS-III abreviado por rangos de edad, mostraron cómo puntuaciones para adultos mayores de 30 años osciló entre 11,5 y 13 puntos en promedio con una desviación estándar de 1,6; sensibilidad SE=79, especificidad SP=67, por lo cual los estudiantes se encontraron en un rango normal de inteligencia en prueba de razonamiento abstracto, teniendo en cuenta edad y estudios previos (Alegret et al, 2013).…”

[O1–13–06]: The Spanish Version of Face‐name Associative Memory Exam (S‐fname) Performance Is Related to Amyloid Burden in Subjective Cognitive Decline

“…All subjects met the following inclusion criteria: they were older than 49 years; literate with at least elementary school (that is, at least 6 years of formal education); with subjective cognitive complaints defined by a score of ≥8 on the Spanish Modified Questionnaire of Memory Failures in Everyday (MFE-30) 40 ; with a preserved performance (≥27 scores) on the Spanish version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) 41,42 a strictly normal performance in a comprehensive neuropsychological battery of Fundació ACE (NBACE). This battery has its own normative data for Spanish individuals older than 49 years old 43 and also, cut-off scores 44 and includes measures of attention, orientation, information processing speed, verbal learning and memory, language, visuoperception, praxis, and visuospatial and executive functions 43,44 ; a Clinical Dementia Rating Score (CDR) 45 of 0; without relevant depressive/anxiety symptoms (score < 11) on the Spanish version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) Scale 46,47 or other psychiatric illness; and without severe auditory or visual abnormalities that could affect performance on neuropsychological tests. Exclusion criteria were: evidence of impairment in activities of daily living, presence of psychiatric diagnosis, history of alcoholism or epilepsy, renal or liver failure, and presence of severe auditory or visual abnormalities, including glaucoma and cataracts.…”