Everyday functioning as a predictor of cognitive status in a group of community-dwelling, predominantly Black adults

We examined whether the Performance Assessment of Self-Care Skills (PASS) and Everyday Cognition Scale-12 (ECog-12) dichotomized cognitive groups in a sample of predominantly Black adults.

Two hundred forty-six community-dwelling adults (95% Black, age 50+) completed cognitive testing, the PASS, and the ECog. Cognitive groups (probable vs unlikely cognitive impairment) were determined by performance on the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination. We examined the predictive validity of the PASS shopping, medication management, and information retrieval subtests and the ECog-12 to dichotomize cognitive groups.

Performance on all PASS subtests (all p's < .05) differed between cognitive groups, but not ECog-12 (p = 0.17). Only the PASS shopping and medication management had good reliability for determining cognitive group (areas under the curve (AUCs) of .74 each).

PASS shopping and medication management exhibited adequate predictive validity when distinguished between cognitive status groups, whereas the PASS information retrieval and ECog-12 did not.

Mild functional decline is a core diagnostic criterion for cognitive impairment.Performance-based assessments are a valuable tool for assessing functional decline.Most performance-based measures were developed using homogenous samples.Few studies have validated these measures in other racial and ethnic populations.