THE SHORT HUMAN FIGURE DRAWING SCALE FOR EVALUATION OF SUSPECT COGNITIVE DYSFUNCTION IN OLD-AGE

Human figure drawings have been widely used to assess cognitive develo pment in children. In the present study, free-hand human figure drawin gs were examined for 62 demented patients, and 60 normal elderly subje cts. The drawings were scored for 53 body details using a method deriv ed from work with children, A short scale of 15 details was developed by selecting body details with high item-total correlations which are simple to score even for untrained staff. This short scale had excelle nt interscorer and test-retest reliability and excellent concurrent va lidity as well. It correlated highly with the Mini-Mental State Examin ation, a commonly used screening test for dementia. The Short scale di scriminated demented and non-demented subjects and different levels of dementia severity as graded by the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale, Ho wever, no differences were observed between Alzheimer patients and pat ients with vascular dementia concerning presence of details in human f igure drawings.