The "Test Your Memory" test performs better than the MMSE in a population without known cognitive dysfunction
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Published on: January 24, 2020
Paula S Koekkoek1, Guy E H M Rutten, Esther van den Berg
1Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. p.s.koekkoek-3@umcutrecht.nl
Aim:
To examine the relation of performance on the self-administered Test Your Memory test (TYM) and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) with a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment in a population sample including people with modest cognitive decrements.
Methods:
Eighty-six participants (aged 56-77 years), without known cognitive dysfunction, performed a neuropsychological assessment including MMSE, and were asked to fill out the TYM. The relation between both the TYM and the MMSE and a neuropsychological assessment was examined by means of correlation analyses, area under the ROC curves for discriminating between a "normal" and "modest decrements"(≥1SD below the sample mean) group, and Bland-Altman plots.
Results:
Correlation with the full neuropsychological assessment was significantly stronger for the TYM than the MMSE (r=0.78 versus r=0.55; Steiger's Z=2.66, p<0.01). The TYM showed an area under the ROC-curve of 0.88 (95% CI 0.80 to 0.97) for differentiating between "normal" and "modest decrements" compared with 0.71 (0.53 to 0.90) for the MMSE. Bland-Altman plots showed limits of agreement for the TYM of -1.10 to 1.10 and for the MMSE of -1.39 to 1.38.
Conclusions:
The TYM showed good correlation with a neuropsychological assessment, performed better in discriminating between variations of cognition and showed more agreement with a neuropsychological assessment than the MMSE.
