Abstract

PAULA, Jonas Jardim de et al. Contributions of the Tower of London for the assessment of planning in elderly with Mild Cognitive Impairment. Neuropsicologia Latinoamericana [online]. 2012, vol.4, n.2, pp. 16-21. ISSN 2075-9479.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5579/rnl.2012.0089.

The Tower of London (TOL) is a task used for assessing planning skills, a component of the executive functions. The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of TOL for the assessment of planning skills of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) patients. We also aimed to evaluate two specific scoring methods of the TOL's correction (Krikorian's x Portela's score method). Ninety six participants were included in this study (53 females; mean age 75.18 + / -7.31 years) - 35 healthy controls, 30 amnestic MCI and 35 multiple domain amnestic MCI. Our results show that only multiple domains amnestic MCI performed worse than the control group. Furthermore, adding the TOL (considering both Krikorian and Portela's method) to the Mini-Mental State Exam the correct classification of subjects according to its diagnostics improves significantly. Our finding suggests that both Krikorian's and Portella's score method for TOL have good psychometric properties considering the assessment of executive impairment in elderly subjects.

Keywords : Elderly; Neuropsychological tests; Executive functions; Planning; Tower of London.

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