Bermúdez-Llusá G, Adrián J A, Arango-Lasprilla J C, Cuetos F
Department of Psychology and Speech-Therapy, University of Málaga, Spain.
Department of Psychology and Speech-Therapy, University of Málaga, Spain.
J Commun Disord. 2019 Nov-Dec;82:105943. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2019.105943. Epub 2019 Sep 30.
The NeuroBel is a short test that allows for psycholinguistic assessment of basic processes of oral comprehension and language production deterioration in the elderly. The objective is to carry out a pilot study of the initial reference values and cut-off points of this battery using a sample of Spanish elderly adults, with and without cognitive impairment, and detecting performance differences among them.
NeuroBel consists of 8 tasks that analyze oral language functioning from the theoretical model proposed by the Psycholinguistic approach. Seventy-five Spanish monolingual adult-elderly participants of both genders. Of those, 25 with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the initial phase, 25 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 25 participants without cognitive impairment (Controls). All subjects were evaluated using NeuroBel.
There are significant differences between the three groups. The participants with AD are significantly worse in the total score of NeuroBel. A discriminant analysis shows that 86.7% of the cases appear correctly classified in the groups originally selected. Likewise, participants with MCI obtained results that are statistically significantly worse than the control group. NeuroBel shows a high correlation with the MMSE (.89) and Sensitivity (.96) in the determination of AD and cognitive deterioration (AD + MCI vs. Controls). The area under the ROC curve is .97 in the contrast of AD vs. Controls and .98 in the determination of cognitive deterioration (AD + MCI vs. Controls). The canonical discriminant functions and the precision cut-offs from the ROC analyses are also shown in the results.
NeuroBel is shown as a "very good" test in the detection of cognitive-linguistic impairment in elderly-adults.
NeuroBel是一项简短测试，可用于对老年人的口语理解和语言生成基本过程进行心理语言学评估。目的是使用西班牙老年成年人样本（有和没有认知障碍）对该测试组合的初始参考值和临界点进行初步研究，并检测他们之间的表现差异。
NeuroBel由8项任务组成，这些任务从心理语言学方法提出的理论模型分析口语功能。75名西班牙单语成年老年人参与者，男女皆有。其中，25名处于阿尔茨海默病（AD）初始阶段，25名患有轻度认知障碍（MCI），25名无认知障碍参与者（对照组）。所有受试者均使用NeuroBel进行评估。
三组之间存在显著差异。AD参与者在NeuroBel总分上明显更差。判别分析表明，86.7%的病例在最初选择的组中被正确分类。同样，MCI参与者获得的结果在统计学上明显比对照组差。NeuroBel在AD和认知衰退（AD + MCI与对照组）的测定中与MMSE（.89）和敏感性（.96）高度相关。AD与对照组对比时ROC曲线下面积为.97，认知衰退（AD + MCI与对照组）测定时为.98。结果中还显示了典型判别函数和ROC分析的精确临界点。
NeuroBel在检测老年成年人认知语言障碍方面表现为一项“非常好”的测试。
