Dementia: the estimation of premorbid intelligence levels using the New Adult Reading Test

The NART is a new word-reading test which was specifically designed for use with adults: the 50 words were selected in order to assess familiarity with words rather than the ability to phonetically decode unfamilar words, i.e. for each word intelligent guesswork alone would not result in a correct response. The results from a group of patients with cortical atrophy and a control group demonstrated the superiority of the NART over the best previously available word list (the Schonell GWRT) in enabling higher and more accurate levels of intelligence to be predicted. The evidence implied that the reading of the NART words was not significantly affected by the dementing processes in the patients with cortical atrophy, and therefore that the NART reading score can provide an accurate estimate of premorbid intelligence levels in these patients.