Validation of At-Home Application of a Digital Cognitive Screener for Older Adults

Standardized neuropsychological assessments of older adults are important for both clinical diagnosis and biobehavioral research. Over decades, in-person testing has been the basis for population normative values that rank cognitive performance by demographic status. Most recently, digital tools hav...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in aging neuroscience 2022-07, Vol.14, p.907496
Main Authors: Arioli, Melissa, Rini, James, Anguera-Singla, Roger, Gazzaley, Adam, Wais, Peter E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Age
Aging
Aging Neuroscience
Automation
Cognitive ability
cognitive aging
cognitive screener
Computers
Dementia
Laboratories
LTM
Memory
neuropsychological
Neuropsychology
Older people
Pap smear
Population
Portable computers
remote digital
Software
Speech
Verbal learning
Voice recognition
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Summary:Standardized neuropsychological assessments of older adults are important for both clinical diagnosis and biobehavioral research. Over decades, in-person testing has been the basis for population normative values that rank cognitive performance by demographic status. Most recently, digital tools have enabled remote data collection for cognitive measures, which offers the significant promise to extend the basis for normative values to be more inclusive of a larger cross section of the older population. We developed a Remote Characterization Module (RCM), using a speech-to-text interface, as a novel digital tool to administer an at-home, 25-min cognitive screener that mimics eight standardized neuropsychological measures. Forty cognitively healthy participants were recruited from a longitudinal aging research cohort, and they performed the same measures of memory, attention, verbal fluency and set-shifting in both in-clinic paper-and-pencil (PAP) and at-home RCM versions. The results showed small differences, if any, for how participants performed on in-person and remote versions in five of eight tasks. Critically, robust correlations between their PAP and RCM scores across participants support the finding that remote, digital testing can provide a reliable assessment tool for rapid and remote screening of healthy older adults' cognitive performance in several key domains. The implications for digital cognitive screeners are discussed.
ISSN:1663-4365
1663-4365
DOI:10.3389/fnagi.2022.907496