Skip to content
Closer - The home of longitudinal research

NSHD – Age 68-70 – Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-III: Total Score

The MRC National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 68-70 sweep using the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-III (ACE-III).

Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.


Domain:Verbal and non-verbal ability
Measures:Attention/Orientation
Memory
Language
Verbal Fluency
Visuospatial Skills
CHC:G (general ability)
Administration method:Research nurse. Mostly conducted using ACEmobile app, installed on iPad, with prompts to guide interviewer through the process. Pen and paper used where necessary (e.g. drawing tests).
Procedure:The ACE-III was designed to detect mild dementia and distinguish between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) (Mathuranath et al., 2000). Although it may be considered a measure of general cognitive ability, it was developed as a screen for impairment for use in clinical settings. It contains tasks/questions that measure 5 different cognitive domains: attention and orientation (scored 0 - 18); verbal fluency (0 - 14); memory (0 - 26); language (0 - 26); and visuospatial function (0 - 16). The tasks/questions used to assess the 5 specific domains are outlined separately in the next sections. Responses from the 5 domains can be summed to create an overall cognitive functioning score (0 - 100). ACE-III was administered by the interviewers via iPad using ACEmobile (http://www.acemobile.org). Where this was not possible, a paper version was used. All offline scoring was undertaken by trained personnel.
Link to questionnaire:https://skylark.ucl.ac.uk/NSHD/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=mrepo:ace-iii.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:One mark per correct item (0 - 100)
Item-level variable(s):ACESCRAT15x - ACEVISIOTOT15x
Total score/derived variable(s):ACETOTFIN15x, MINIACE15x
Descriptives:Raw score
N = 1,762
Range = 53 - 100
Mean = 91.52
SD = 6.01
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):Mean = 834.14, SD = 2.93, Range = 828 - 848
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Mathuranath, P. S., Nestor, P. J., Berrios, G. E., Rakowicz, W., & Hodges, J. R. (2000). A brief cognitive test battery to differentiate Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Neurology, 55(11), 1613-1620.
Technical resources:Noone, P. (2015). Addenbrooke's cognitive examination-III. Occupational Medicine, 65(5), 418-420.
Reference examples:Matías-Guiu, J. A., Valles-Salgado, M., Rognoni, T., Hamre-Gil, F., Moreno-Ramos, T., & Matías-Guiu, J. (2017). Comparative diagnostic accuracy of the ACE-III, MIS, MMSE, MoCA, and RUDAS for screening of Alzheimer Disease. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 43(5-6), 237-246.
James, S. N., Davis, D., O'Hare, C., Sharma, N., John, A., Gaysina, D., ... & Richards, M. (2018). Lifetime affective problems and later-life cognitive state: Over 50 years of follow-up in a British birth cohort study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 241, 348-355.

Go to:


This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.