2013 Volume 25 Issue 1 Pages 55-62
The Japanese Adult Reading Test (JART) is a standardized cognitive function test to estimate the premorbid intelligence quotients (IQ) of examinees with cognitive impairments. However, use of JART in clinical practice gives an impression that IQ, as estimated by JART, decreases as cognitive impairment progresses. In this study, we examined the association between cognitive impairment severity and scores for the JART-25 (the abridged version). Moreover, JART-25 and the subscales of cognitive function tests were also examined to determine which cognitive functions are associated with JART-25. This study included 828 patients who visited our outpatient memory loss clinic, and we also examined whether the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Hasegawa Dementia Scale-Revised (HDS-R) were associated with JART-25. The results revealed low MMSE and HDS-R scores to be associated with low JART-25 scores. Next, we examined whether the MMSE and HDS-R subscales were associated with JART-25. We found JART-25 to be weakly associated with cognitive functions of orientation, memory, comprehension, and executive function but strongly associated with those of attention, language function, and number concept. Thus, our results suggest that JART-25 scores should be interpreted with a degree of caution.
