Publications by authors named "Alita Fernandez"

Objective: Compare a telephone version and full version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA).

Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of a prospective study. A 20-point telephone version of MoCA (Tele-MoCA) was compared to the Full-MoCA and Mini Mental State Examination.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Anomia is common in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), and there is considerable evidence that semantic problems (as opposed to impaired access to output word phonology) exist in many PPA individuals irrespective of their strict subtype, including a loss of representations from semantic memory, which is typical for people with the semantic variant of PPA. In this manuscript we present a straightforward novel clinical algorithm that quantifies this degree of semantic storage impairment. We sought to produce an algorithm by employing tasks that would measure key elements of semantic storage loss: a) whether an unrecalled name could be retrieved with cues; b) if performance for items was consistent across tasks; and c) the degree to which a participant's performance was related to general severity of cognitive impairment rather than semantic loss.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Upon publication of this article [1], it was brought to our attention that one of the 303 participants in the normative study should have been deleted from the database.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: A need exists for easily administered assessment tools to detect mild cognitive changes that are more comprehensive than screening tests but shorter than a neuropsychological battery and that can be administered by physicians, as well as any health care professional or trained assistant in any medical setting. The Toronto Cognitive Assessment (TorCA) was developed to achieve these goals.

Methods: We obtained normative data on the TorCA (n = 303), determined test reliability, developed an iPad version, and validated the TorCA against neuropsychological assessment for detecting amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) (n = 50/57, aMCI/normal cognition).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF