Inter- and intra-rater reliability of cognitive assessment conducted by assistive robot for older adults living in the community: a preliminary study.

Background: The purpose of this study was to reveal inter- and intra-rater reliability of the detailed evaluation of cognitive function by assistive robot for older adults.

Methods: We investigated the inter-rater and test-retest reliability. Neurobehavioral Cognitive Status Examination was conducted twice for each participant using an assistive robot and the examiner respectively (Experiment 1). The order of these two tests was randomly selected and the interval between them was 1 week. In Experiment 2, we investigated the test-retest reliability of the first robot test and this additional robot test was conducted approximately 6 weeks after Experiment 1.

Results: Fifty-one (13 men and 38 women, mean age: 80.5 ± 5.6 years) participants went through Experiment 1 and 29 of those (eight men and 21 women, mean age: 80.4 ± 4.8 years) completed Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, the interclass coefficient (ICC) in orientation was in the high range and its Cronbach's α was 0.919, rated as excellent internal consistency. On the other hand, other items did not show positive results. In Experiment 2, the ICCs in orientation, attention, and repetition were in the adequate range, while other items showed marginal or low range.

Conclusions: Orientation was supposed to be utilised for figuring out initial symptoms of dementia. In the future, as robot functions become more high-tech, a partner robot might be able to measure the symptoms and severity of dementia.