The Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale: Findings from a Low-Education Population

Abstract

We constructed a Chinese version of the cognitive component of the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS-Cog). In order to accommodate illiteracy, the Chinese version used pictures instead of words for assessing recall and recognition. The Chinese ADAS-Cog was administered to 125 individuals with no dementia, 127 with questionable dementia, and 77 with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Their age range was 51–92 years and their education range was 0–20 years. The Chinese ADAS-Cog had high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87) and very high interrater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient, or ICC, = 0.99) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.96). It had high correlations with scores on the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (Pearson’s r = 0.85), the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI, Pearson’s r = –0.88), and CASI-estimated scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination (Pearson’s r = –0.85). Performance on the Chinese ADAS-Cog was uninfluenced by age or gender, nor by education level except within the low education range of 0–6 years. Its memory items were best for early detection of dementia; its language items were best for monitoring the progression of dementia. This study found that the Chinese ADAS-Cog is a good instrument for use with Chinese AD patients.

Escala de Avaliação da Doença de Alzheimer - Subescala Cognitiva (ADAS-Cog): Dados Normativos para a População Portuguesa

“…Similarly to previous studies conducted with the ADASCog, 32,33 we found that age was a better predictor of the ADAS-Cog scores than education level. In fact, Graham and colleagues (2004) found no influence of this variable within people with ten or more years of education, leading them to suggest this education level as the threshold for a reliable evaluation of the ADAS-Cog's performance.…”

Neurocognitive Improvement After Carotid Artery Stenting in Patients With Chronic Internal Carotid Artery Occlusion and Cerebral Ischemia

“…Cognitive assessment used global measures that included the Mini-Mental State Examination 14,15 and Alzheimer Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale, a widely used rating instrument that assesses memory, orientation, language, and ideational and constructional praxis; the scores range from 0 to 70, with a higher score indicating lower performance. 16,17 Additional tests of neuropsychological function such as executive function, working memory, and attention, which tend more often to be affected in vascular cognitive impairment than in Alzheimer disease, 18,19 were included. Relevant tasks included verbal fluency (category naming: fruits, vegetables, and fishes) and Trail Making A and B.…”

Improving the Screening Power of the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument, Chinese Version

“…In fact, the MMSE could be directly extracted from the CASI. However, the CASI has been shown to be as effective as the MMSE in screening dementia and more useful in assessing the severity of dementia for having a more detailed assessment and broader scoring ranges [14].…”

“…Independently, the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI), because of its simplicity and short time requirement, has frequently been used as a screening tool for the assessment of dementia [2,3] and its clinical usefulness has been internationally recognized [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. The Chinese version 2.0 (CASI C-2.0) has also been carefully developed and its efficacy, including sensitivity and specificity, has been well studied [9][10][11][12][13][14].…”