NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TEST-PERFORMANCE AND PREDICTION OF FUNCTIONAL CAPACITIES AMONG SPANISH-SPEAKING AND ENGLISH-SPEAKING PATIENTS WITH DEMENTIA

Neuropsychological measures have been widely used by clinicians to ass ist them in making judgments regarding a cognitively impaired patient' s ability to independently perform important activities of daily livin g. However; important questions have been raised concerning the degree to which neuropsychological instruments can predict a broad array of specific functional capacities required in the home environment. In th e present study, we examined 127 English-speaking and 56 Spanish-speak ing patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and determined the extent t o which various neuropsychological measures and demographic variables were predictive of performance on functional measures administered wit hin the clinical setting. Among English-speaking AD patients, Block De sign and Digit-Span of the WAIS-R, as well as tests of language were a mong the strongest predictors of functional performance. For Spanish-s peakers, Block Design, The Mini-Mental State Evaluation (MMSE) and Dig it Span had the optimal predictive power When stepwise regression was conducted on the entire sample of 183 subjects ethnicity emerged as a statistically significant predictor variable on one of the seven funct ional tests (writing a check). Despite the predictive power of several of the neuropsychological measures for both groups, most of the varia bility in objective functional performance could not be explained in o ur regression models. As a result, it would appear prudent to include functional measures as part of a comprehensive neuropsychological eval uation for dementia.