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Sentence writing in the cognitive assessment of the elderly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Robert Howard  and
Martin Orrell
Robert Howard
Affiliation:
Section of Old Age Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF
Martin Orrell
Affiliation:
Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals, London SE5 8AZ
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Testing the ability to write a simple sentence has long formed part of the clinical assessment of the cognitive state in the elderly, and has even been incorporated into standard brief cognitive tests (Folstein et al, 1975). Writing a sentence tests a number of faculties including language skills and praxis. As part of a comparative study of four tests of cognitive function—the Felix Post Unit (Institute of Psychiatry, 1987), Mini Mental State Examination (Folstein et al, 1975), Abbreviated Mental Test (Qureshi & Hodkinson, 1974) and Medical Research Council (MRC, 1987) – sentences written by 158 elderly newly admitted psychiatric patients, as requested in the Mini Mental State, were collected. Our aims were to assess the value of sentence-writing in discriminating between dementia and depression, and to compare the style and content of what was written. Would the material chosen by the patients for their sentences be associated with their diagnoses? In particular, would depressives write miserable sentences and the demented be more likely to write nonsense?

Type
Original articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , April 1992 , pp. 208 - 209
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

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