Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-11-2024
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Communication Sciences and Disorders
First Advisor
Vishakha Rawool
Second Advisor
Rebecca Lowe
Third Advisor
Heather Shirley
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Overview:
Cognitive decline is often associated with the emergence of dementia and other negative developments in health. Due to the potential for harm that cognitive decline can cause, it is essential that clinicians are able to detect and identify when it is occurring. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is useful clinically mainly because of the test’s ability to identify mild cognitive impairment. Following the pandemic in 2020, telehealth has become prominent. Previous studies considering MoCA have mostly used samples of older adults, but it is important to understand the impact of traumatic brain injuries on young adults. The following study aims to generate MoCA norms for the young adult population for remote administration of the test via Zoom with an important modification for consistent delivery of verbal stimuli to minimize
variations in scores that could result due to the differences in acoustic-phonetic characteristics of
the examiners. Methods:
Data was obtained from 84 participants with auditory thresholds within normal limits. They ranged in age between 18 and 28 years. The MoCA was administered remotely, via Zoom. We mostly followed the instructions available during COVID-19 for remote administration of the test with certain adaptations to allow consistent delivery of verbal stimuli to
all participants. Results:
The mean total MoCA score in our 84 participants was 27.95 (95% confidence interval: 27.60 to 28.30) with a standard deviation of 1.605. The Shapiro Wilk test of normality revealed
that the data was not normally distributed (P ˂ .0001). The median score was 28 and interquartile
range was 2. Thus, the normal cutoff using this modified remote version of MoCA for the specific population used in this study is 28 minus 2 or 26. Conclusions:
This study established normative data for remote administration of the MoCA test with some adaptations. Clinical applications of these results for potential cognitive deficiencies in young adults include those with sport related concussions, long term COVID related complications, accidental trauma or dementia due to alcohol or other substance abuse. Limitations included participants from just one geographic region and all participants having completed high school and being enrolled in higher education.
Recommended Citation
Johns, Elizabeth, "MoCA normative data on young adults using an adapted version and remote administration via Zoom" (2024). Honors Theses. 3136.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/3136