A Preliminary Study for the Development of Informant-Report Scale on Cognitive-Linguistic Abilities of the Elderly: Focused on Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Purpose: Subjective cognitive-linguistic test is used to supplement various objective tests and increase a diagnostic accuracy. The purpose of this preliminary study was to develop and standardize the Informant-report Scale on Cognitive-Linguistic abilities of the Elderly (ISCOLE), and investigate the correlation between ISCOLE and objective test in individuals with neurological disease. Methods: People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 30) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (n = 32) completed the objective cognitive-linguistic test. Informants of these patients (n = 62) and controls (n = 35) provided ratings of ISCOLE. Results: The main findings were as follows. Firstly, there was a significant difference among three groups in all subdomains and total score of ISCOLE. Secondly, several domains like attention, higher-order cognition, and language of ISCOLE were significantly associated with the objective performances in tow groups. Thirdly, memory, language, and total score of ISCOLE were a predictor of memory in MCI group. AD’s higher-order cognition was also predicted by attention, language and higher-order cognition of ISCOLE. Conclusion: This study is expected to help confirm the overall correlations between ISCOLE and objective test, and present the predictors of objective cognitive-linguistic performances in MCI and AD. The findings have implications for the use of ISCOLE in clinical settings. We also showed evidence that the ISCOLE is an informant-based measure of cognitive-linguistic decline providing a relevant contribution to the diagnostic and prognostic investigation of patients with MCI and AD.