Stephen C. Bowden

Delayed recall measures are considered sensitive to episodic long-term memory impairment, and longer delays are argued to aid diagnostic accuracy. This meta-analysis examined whether delayed recall provides an advantage in identifying memory impairment relative to very short-delay or "immediate" recall. Eligible studies included a patient sample with suspected or known episodic memory impairment and a healthy control sample, both administered immediate and delayed recall trials. The standardized mean difference (Hedges' g) between patients and controls on immediate and delayed recall was calculated using multivariate random-effects meta-analysis. The meta-analysis included 290 studies, comprising 71,381 controls and 45,054 patients. Delayed recall ranged from 40 s filled delay to 6 weeks. Controls outperformed patients on immediate (g = 1.074, 95% CI [0.973, 1.176]) and delayed recall (g = 1.148, 95% CI [1.034, 1.261]). Patient-control differentiation was greater on delayed compared to immediate recall (g = -0.083, 95% CI [-0.126, -0.041]), though the difference was not clinically meaningful. Delay length (minutes) did not predict the delayed recall effect (β^ < 0.001) or moderate the difference between immediate and delayed recall (β^ = 0.020). Analyzed separately, word list, story, and shape recall measures showed no effect for increasing delay, and word list measures showed no delayed recall advantage. In mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, delayed recall offered a small to medium advantage, but this was not present across all measures. All clinical subgroups analyzed showed no effect for increasing delay length. Further research is needed to clarify the utility of delayed recall. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be challenging to diagnose early as cognitive changes are mild. Neuropsychological assessment, in contrast to cognitive screening or isolated cognitive tests, are more sensitive to the mild cognitive changes in early AD. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can detect early structural brain changes in AD, particularly entorhinal cortex, transentorhinal cortex, and hippocampal atrophy. Combining neuropsychological assessment with MRI examination may yield improved ability to detect early AD. The current study examined combining neuropsychological and MRI measures to detect patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in a memory clinic sample.Method: Neuropsychological assessment and entorhinal cortex, transentorhinal cortex, and hippocampal volume measurement were conducted in memory clinic patients, including 38 with memory symptoms, 16 with MCI, and 16 with dementia due to AD, and in 40 healthy controls. Backward stepwise multinomial logistic regression was used to compare the neuropsychological measures and MRI measures.Result: Among the neuropsychological measures, memory and processing speed were the most important measures that contributed to group membership prediction. All MRI measures contributed to group membership prediction. The neuropsychological measures were more accurate than the MRI measures at detecting patients with MCI. Combining the MRI measures with the neuropsychological measures did not improve group membership prediction.Conclusion: Neuropsychological assessment is an important tool to support MCI diagnosis. MRI measures contribute little diagnostic value over and above neuropsychological assessment. Further advancement in deriving MRI‐based measurements is required to achieve clinical utility.

The aim of this study was to objectively evaluate the hypothesis that the neuropsychological presentation of Korsakoff’s syndrome, the chronic phase of Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome (WKS), is invariably a severe, selective amnesia against a background of relatively preserved general intellectual functions in a consecutive clinical sample. An analysis of the neuropsychological profiles of nine cases with a recorded history of WKS was undertaken. All cases were adult males (ages 32 to 70) with a long history of alcohol use disorder. Eight cases were chosen retrospectively on a consecutive basis from patient referrals. One additional case was recruited prospectively. Conventional understanding and some current opinion of Korsakoff’s syndrome predicts anterograde memory to be consistently more impaired than other cognitive abilities, but this was not found in this case series. The Mean Wechsler Delayed Memory Index was not significantly different from the Wechsler Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ), p = 0.130. Regression of Delayed Memory on FSIQ produced a non-significant intercept, p = 0.213. The ‘hallmark’ criterion of anterograde memory score at least 20 points less than intelligence score was observed in four of eight cases with available data, equating to a ‘sensitivity’ of 50%. Three of eight cases with available data had an FSIQ less than the memory score. Contrary to a common view, general intellectual function was not consistently preserved in Korsakoff’s syndrome relative to memory function. This study illustrates one of the specific merits of case series, namely, to critique an established view. Clinicians and researchers should expand their diagnostic criteria for Korsakoff’s syndrome to include more variable cognitive phenotypes, including a potentially reversible dementia-like impairment of variable severity, and focus on potential treatment opportunities.

The Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) model is based on psychometric cognitive ability research and is the most empirically supported model of cognitive ability constructs. This study is one in a series of cross-national comparisons investigating the equivalence and generalizability of psychological constructs which align with the CHC model. Previous research exploring the cross-cultural generalizability of cognitive ability measures concluded that the factor analytic models of cognitive abilities generalize across cultures and are compatible with well-established CHC constructs. The equivalence of the psychological constructs, as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V), has been established across English-speaking samples. However, few studies have explored the equivalence of psychological constructs across non-English speaking, nationally representative samples. This study explored the equivalence of the WISC-V five-factor model across standardization samples from France, Spain, and the US. The five-factor scoring model demonstrated excellent fit across the three samples independently. Factorial invariance was investigated and the results demonstrated strict factorial invariance across France, Spain, and the US. The results provide further support for the generalizability of CHC constructs across Western cultural populations that speak different languages and support the continued use and development of the CHC model as a common nomenclature and blueprint for cognitive ability researchers and test developers. Suggestions for future research on the CHC model of intelligence are discussed.

Objectives:Cognitive impairment affects older adults’ capacity to live independently and make lifestyle decisions (lifestyle decision-making capacity; LS-DMC). Cognitive screens and clinical interviews are often used to assess people’s need for living-supports prior to conducting comprehensive LS-DMC assessments in busy clinical settings. This study investigated whether the QuickSort – a brief new cognitive screen – provides efficient and accurate information regarding patients’ LS-DMC when initially interviewed.Methods:This is an observational and diagnostic accuracy study of older inpatients (≥60 years) consecutively referred for neuropsychological assessment of LS-DMC (n = 124). The resources required by inpatients with questionable LS-DMC were quantified (length of hospital stay, living-supports). QuickSort scores, patient background information, and two common cognitive screens were used to differentiate between older inpatients (n = 124) who lacked (64%)/did not-lack (36%) LS-DMC.Results:Hospitalizations averaged 49 days, with 62% of inpatients being readmitted within one year. The QuickSort differentiated between those lacking/not-lacking LS-DMC better than two common cognitive screens and patient information. The likelihood that inpatients lacked LS-DMC increased by a factor of 65.26 for QuickSort scores <2 and reduced by a factor of 0.32 for scores ≥13. Modeling revealed that the post-test likelihood of lacking LS-DMC increased to 99% (scores <2) and reduced to 30% (scores ≥ 13) in settings where many inpatients lack LS-DMC.Conclusions:Older adult inpatients with questionable LS-DMC have a high risk of extended hospitalization and readmission. The QuickSort provides time-efficient and sensitive information regarding patients’ LS-DMC, making it a viable alternative to longer cognitive screens that are used at the initial interview stage.

Objective: The Mayo Normative Studies (MNS) represents a robust dataset that provides demographically corrected norms for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. We report MNS application to an independent cohort to evaluate whether MNS norms accurately adjust for age, sex, and education differences in subjects from a different geographic region of the country. As secondary goals, we examined item-level patterns, recognition benefit compared to delayed free recall, and derived Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) confidence intervals (CIs) to facilitate clinical performance characterization.Method: Participants from the Emory Healthy Brain Study (463 women, 200 men) who were administered the AVLT were analyzed to demonstrate expected demographic group differences. AVLT scores were transformed using MNS normative correction to characterize the success of MNS demographic adjustment.Results: Expected demographic effects were observed across all primary raw AVLT scores. Depending on sample size, MNS normative adjustment either eliminated or minimized all observed statistically significant AVLT differences. Estimated CIs yielded broad CI ranges exceeding the standard deviation of each measure. The recognition performance benefit across age ranged from 2.7 words (SD = 2.3) in the 50–54-year-old group to 4.7 words (SD = 2.7) in the 70–75-year-old group.Conclusions: These findings demonstrate generalizability of MNS normative correction to an independent sample from a different geographic region, with demographic adjusted performance differences close to overall performance levels near the expected value of T = 50. A large recognition performance benefit is commonly observed in the normal aging process and by itself does not necessarily suggest a pathological retrieval deficit.