(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . President Biden's "everyday cognitive function" [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-03-02 The MSM and even some at DK are fretting about President Biden’s cognitive function, based on a few verbal slips. While I’m not a clinician, I’ve been a researcher on cognitive decline in aging, especially Alzheimer’s, for over 35 years. Most of the ways that we’d assess cognitive performance require evaluation by a neurologist or neuropsychologist during an office visit. But we do have some ways for individuals or those around them to check how they are doing at everyday cognitive activities, and whether they are declining. I’ve chosen the part of one of these measures, the ECog (Everyday Cognition test), that focuses on memory and language, and tried to evaluate both President Biden and The Former Guy based on what we have seen and heard reported from public appearances. I’ll post the details below, and let you do your own assessment. Bottom line, my reading: President Biden has little to no change from 10 years ago, while TFG is consistently noticeably worse. The ECog (Everyday Cognition) is a measure of performance in everyday activities, as assessed both by the person for him/herself and by someone close to the person (typically a family member or other household member), developed by Sarah Tomaszewski Farias and colleagues (1). The scale has 39 items covering six areas of function: Everyday Memory, Everyday Language, Everyday Visuospatial Abilities, and Everyday Planning, Everyday Organization, and Everyday Divided Attention. The informant reports how the person does currently at each item, compared with how they did 10 years earlier. For each item, the person is assessed as 1 = better or no change compared to 10 years earlier, 2 = questionable/occasionally worse, 3 = consistently a little worse, 4 = consistently much worse, or “I don’t know.” There is also a shorter, 12-item version (2). You can see thei full list of 39 tems online (3). This scale is widely used by neurologists and neuropsychologists in clinical research, and has been extensively validated. (Disclaimer: I am a colleague of the Dr. Tomaszewski Farias, and I was involved in the original research, and I have also been part of many studies that use the ECog.) I believe it would be a much more relevant scale for assessing the performance of President Biden and Mr. Trump than the MOCA, which is primarily helpful for detecting clinical cognitive impairment and early dementia, and is not especially sensitive to the very earliest, subtle signs that might affect everyday performance but not yet be of clinical concern. Many of the items in the ECog would not be possible to evaluate for an outside observer, but some of those in the Everyday Language and Everyday Memory sections could be evident from press conferences and public speaking. I have put together a table of 8 of the 39 items, which I think an observant outsider might be able to score based on President Biden’s and Mr. Trump’s many public appearances and interviews over the last 10 years or so. I have replaced “names of objects” with “names of people” as that is of particular interest right now. I wonder what a close, objective informant might give as an ECog score for President Biden or for Mr. Trump. Lacking that, have you observed past and present speeches and public appearances enough to venture a guess? Score each item as 1 = better or no change compared to 10 years earlier, 2 = questionable/occasionally worse, 3 = consistently a little worse, 4 = consistently much worse, or blank for “I don’t know”, separately for President Biden (JRB) and Mr. Trump (DJT). Compared to 10 years ago, has there been any change in: Score JRB DJT 1. Remembering things that happened recently (such as recent outings, events in the news). 2. Recalling conversations a few days later. 3. Repeating stories and/or questions. 4. Forgetting the names of people. 5. Verbally giving instructions to others. 6. Finding the right words to use in a conversation. 7. Communicating thoughts in a conversation. 8. Understanding the point of what other people are trying to say. AVERAGE SCORE (omitting blanks) My own casual impressions: Mr. Biden is occasionally worse on names of people. Mr. Trump is consistently a little worse. Mr. Biden occasionally hesitates on words but much of that is consistent with his lifelong patterns from stuttering, so I would not score him as worse than 10 years ago. Mr. Trump appears consistently much worse, often using wrong or inappropriate words. Mr. Trump’s public appearances suggest he is consistently much worse on repeating stories. Otherwise, based on press conferences alone, I’d give Mr. Biden mostly 1’s, and Mr. Trump a mix of 1’s and 2’s – he does seem to slip sometimes on recent events. So my rating is that Mr. Biden is about a 1.2 and Mr. Trump a 2.2, on average. Higher scores are worse. References: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/2/2227100/-President-Biden-s-everyday-cognitive-function?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/