57 Validation of a List Learning Task for Monolingual Spanish Speaking Older Adults

• Published in: Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 2023-11, Vol.29 (s1), p.734-735
• Main Authors: Diaz, Valentina E, Lopez, Lucia, Aguirre, Gloria, Dorsman, Karen A, Rodriguez, Anne-Marie, Puac, Jorge Archila, Lee, Shannon, Pina-Escudero, Stefanie D, Lanata, Serggio, Casaletto, Kaitlin, Kramer, Joel H
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Assessment/Psychometrics/Methods (Adult); Cognitive ability; Dementia disorders; Hispanic Americans; Learning; Memory; Mental task performance; Neuroimaging; Older people; Poster Session 08: Assessment | Psychometrics | Noncredible Presentations | Forensic; Validation studies; Validity
• ISSN: 1355-6177; 1469-7661
• DOI: 10.1017/S1355617723009153

Objective:The prevalence of dementia is higher among minoritized Hispanic/Latino populations in the U.S. Development of linguistically relevant and validated cognitive assessments are urgently needed to adequately address the care needs of this at-risk group. List learning tasks are widely used to evaluate verbal episodic memory and are consistently shown to be sensitive to memory deficits across variousneurologic etiologies. The aim of this study was to validate a Spanish list learning task developed as a linguistically appropriate measure of memory in a diverse sample of Spanish speaking Bay Area older adults who identify as Hispanic/Latino.Participants and Methods:Cognitive scores were assessed in 72 Spanish-speaking older adults living in the Bay Area, California, originally from different countries across South and Central America [(n=29 with CDR scores of 0; n=31 with CDRs of 0.5; and n=12 with CDR of 1), aged 54-96, 30% male)], who completed the Spanish list learning task and a brief neuropsychological battery. The list learning task contains 9 words, 3 words from 3 different semantic categories. Category exemplars were excluded. Administration includes three immediate recall trials, a 30-second delay free recall, 10-minute delay free and cued recall, and yes/no recognition. In this initial validation study, we selected the 10-minute delay recall trial as our primary variable and looked at several indices of construct validity. We hypothesized delayed free recall would: 1) correlate highly with other episodic memory tasks, and minimally with non-memory tests (controlling for CDR sum of boxes), and 2) show step-wise declines as total CDR increased from 0 to 1 (controlling for age, sex, and education).Results:Delayed recall scores of 30-seconds and 10-minutes showed step-wise declines as CDR scores increased (CDR 0 vs. 1, p0.05). 10-minute delay showed medium-to-large correlations with UDS Craft Story Delayed Recall (partial r =0.45, p