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Analysis of structure and discriminative power of the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale
Author(s) -
Hofer Scott M.,
Piccinin Andrea M.,
Hershey Douglas
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-4679(199607)52:4<395::aid-jclp4>3.0.co;2-p
Subject(s) - psychology , perseveration , verbal fluency test , discriminative model , rating scale , dementia , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , cognition , clinical psychology , psychiatry , disease , neuropsychology , artificial intelligence , medicine , pathology , computer science
The study examines the factor structure and provides test of the discriminative properties of the 38‐item Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (MDRS). The MDRS was designed a priori to measure five broad domains of cognitive abilities: attention, initiation/perseveration, conceptualization, construction, and memory. Complete item level data were collected at the USC Alzheimer Disease Research Center from 19 probable Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients, 17 cases with dementia of various etiologies (e.g., multiple infarct), and 49 contrast subjects. Factor analyses, with rotation to equamax criterion, were performed on education partialled data. Five and six factor solutions accounted for most of the reliable variance and permitted simple structure theoretical description for separate subscales. These factors, similar to Mattis' design, can be characterized as Memory (Recall)/Verbal Fluency, Construction, Memory (short‐term), Initiation/Perseveration, and Simple Commands. Cross‐validated discriminant analyses performed on five unit‐weighted composite variables derived from factor analysis provided better classification (72% vs 62%) than the 38 Mattis items alone. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.