A comparative study of two psychometric approaches to detect risk status for dementia.

This study results from an effort to examine the relationship between the diagnostic potentials for detecting risk status for dementia of a cognitive plasticity approach and a traditional status-oriented procedure (test battery) by Storandt et al. [Arch Neurol 1984;41:497-499]. The aim is to compare prediction accuracy for risk for developing dementia with these two approaches. A sample of 106 community-dwelling elderly adults were tested with both procedures, and their scores on the Structured Interview for the Diagnosis of Dementia used as external criterion for predicting risk status. The findings show that figural relations pretest and training gains account for a considerable amount of individual differences in mental status similar to that explained by the traditional test battery. In addition, the accuracy of discrimination between healthy and at-risk participants appears slightly higher when using the figural pretest and training gains. These results suggest the conclusion that use of figural relations tests and the cognitive plasticity approach represents a viable alternative to the traditional, status-oriented test battery as a means of early diagnosis of dementia in nonclinical populations.