Validation of SATURN, a free, electronic, self‐administered cognitive screening test

Abstract

Abstract Background Cognitive screening is limited by clinician time and variability in administration and scoring. We therefore developed Self‐Administered Tasks Uncovering Risk of Neurodegeneration (SATURN), a free, public‐domain, self‐administered, and automatically scored cognitive screening test, and validated it on inexpensive (<$100) computer tablets. Methods SATURN is a 30‐point test including orientation, word recall, and math items adapted from the Saint Louis University Mental Status test, modified versions of the Stroop and Trails tasks, and other assessments of visuospatial function and memory. English‐speaking neurology clinic patients and their partners 50 to 89 years of age were given SATURN, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and a brief survey about test preferences. For patients recruited from dementia clinics (n = 23), clinical status was quantified with the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale. Care partners (n = 37) were assigned CDR = 0. Results SATURN and MoCA scores were highly correlated (P < .00001; r = 0.90). CDR sum‐of‐boxes scores were well‐correlated with both tests (P < .00001) (r = −0.83 and −0.86, respectively). Statistically, neither test was superior. Most participants (83%) reported that SATURN was easy to use, and most either preferred SATURN over the MoCA (47%) or had no preference (32%). Discussion Performance on SATURN—a fully self‐administered and freely available (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.02v6wwpzr) cognitive screening test—is well‐correlated with MoCA and CDR scores.

Keywords

• Alzheimer's disease
• cognitive screening
• computer‐based test
• dementia screening
• psychometrics
• self‐administered cognitive test