Cognition of the older adult requires specific tools and considerations to accurately assess mental status. Which of the following instruments takes high school education into consideration when assessing cognition?Group of answer choicesSLUMSMoCA version 7.1Cranial nerve III testingMini-Cog

Neurological assessment of the older adult requires specific tools and considerations to assess patient mental status. Which of the following should be used to assess patient cognition?Group of answer choicesAdminister SLUMS, a short dementia assessment.Administer MoCA v 7.1, a 12-item assessment to detect mild neurocognitive disorders.Administer testing of cranial nerve III.Administer Mini-Cog, a three-word recall with clock drawing capability. PreviousNext

Cognitive assessment

Why is Assess Cognitive Function one of the specific precaution when administering medication for older adults?

Fill in the Blank QuestionFill in the blank question. effects relating to education, work, and health need to be taken into account when studying the cognitive functioning of older adults.

Research suggests that cognitive changes occur with age.  Though dementia is common, occurring in about 14% of individuals age 71 and older and in almost 34% of individuals 90 and older, a majority of older adults exhibit some degree of "normal" cognitive decline.  The following studies were conducted on 605 older adults (mean age = 78.2) who did not show any signs of dementia and 590 younger adult participants (mean age = 28.8).Cognition studiesParticipants were asked to solve five puzzles designed to test their ability to apply new information, reason inductively and deductively, and use logic.  Participants were also asked to complete a 20-item vocabulary and grammar test.  The older adults performed significantly worse than the younger adults on the puzzles, but there was no significant difference between the groups on the vocabulary/grammar test.Focus studiesWhen asked to read a short story and then answer a series of questions assessing comprehension (focused condition), older adults performed equally well as the younger adults.  However, when asked to read a similar story while wearing headphones playing another story that was to be ignored (distraction condition), older adults performed worse than younger adults when answering questions assessing comprehension of the story they read.Memory studiesWhen asked to memorize 30 neutral items (eg, a key, a pencil, a book), the images of which were presented serially, younger adults performed significantly better when asked to list the items immediately after seeing them and when asked to list the items after performing a distraction task.  In a second trial, both groups were serially presented with 30 pictures of faces showing positive, negative, or neutral expressions.  The groups were later asked to identify these faces among a set of 100.  Results are shown in Figure 1.Figure 1  Average number of correctly identified faces for older and younger adult groups Question 5Which of the following conflicts corresponds to the stage of psychosocial development most appropriate for the age of the older adult study participants?A.Autonomy vs. shameB.Industry vs. inferiorityC.Integrity vs. despairD.Intimacy vs. isolation