Validation study of the Italian version of Communication Activities of the Daily Living (CADL 2) as an ecologic cognitive assessment measure in older subjects.

Introduction: Communication can be affected by age related cognitive decline and mental deterioration. The second edition of the Communication Activities of the Daily Living (CADL 2) appears as an interesting ecological assessment tool of cognitive functions in old age.

Objective: The aim of this work is to (1) develop an Italian version of CADL 2, (2) to test its psychometric properties in terms of reliability and validity, and (3) to measure CADL 2 discriminative capacity between cognitively healthy and cognitively impaired older subjects.

Method: One hundred and eleven subjects were enrolled (36 M; 75 F, age 80, 80.85 ± 7 years, education 9.3 ± 4.7 years). The CADL 2 was administered together with a standard neuropsychological battery.

Results: The CADL 2 showed good reliability and correlates with all the cognitive evaluation tests. The CADL 2's area under the curve was equal to 0.80, index of good diagnostic accuracy.

Conclusions: The CADL 2 is an appropriate assessment tool for communication skills in aging.