Everyday functioning as a predictor of cognitive status in a group of community-dwelling, predominantly Black adults

Introduction: We examined whether the Performance Assessment of Self-Care Skills (PASS) and Everyday Cognition Scale-12 (ECog-12) dichotomized cognitive groups in a sample of predominantly Black adults.

Methods: Two hundred forty-six community-dwelling adults (95% Black, age 50+) completed cognitive testing, the PASS, and the ECog. Cognitive groups (probable vs unlikely cognitive impairment) were determined by performance on the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination. We examined the predictive validity of the PASS shopping, medication management, and information retrieval subtests and the ECog-12 to dichotomize cognitive groups.

Results: Performance on all PASS subtests (all p's < .05) differed between cognitive groups, but not ECog-12 (p = 0.17). Only the PASS shopping and medication management had good reliability for determining cognitive group (areas under the curve (AUCs) of .74 each).

Discussion: PASS shopping and medication management exhibited adequate predictive validity when distinguished between cognitive status groups, whereas the PASS information retrieval and ECog-12 did not.

Highlights: Mild functional decline is a core diagnostic criterion for cognitive impairment.Performance-based assessments are a valuable tool for assessing functional decline.Most performance-based measures were developed using homogenous samples.Few studies have validated these measures in other racial and ethnic populations.