Discriminative validity of the Stroop Test Çapa Version in mild cognitive impairment and alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease, and it is one of the main causes of dementia. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) manifests itself with significant cognitive impairment and people with MCI have high risk of developing AD. Stroop test is known as a valid and reliable neuropsychological test which has been used for assessing executive functions and cognitive abilities for many years. The aim of this study is to determine the discrinitive validity of Stroop Test Çapa Form in AD, MCI and healty subjects. 131 healthy control subjects, 109 patients with MCI and 62 patients with AD were included in the study. The relative contribution of age and education variables on section completion times, spontaneous correction and errors were examined by multiple linear regression analysis. Education made a significant contribution to the model in explaining the total variance of duration of task completion, spontaneous correction and errors of healthy subjects. Education has a significant effect to the model in the Stroop B duration and error counts of the MCI cases and in the task duration of the individuals with AD. The main effects of age and education on the subtests were examined by 2 x 2 factorial ANOVA. Healthy participants with 9-year or more education completed Stroop A and Stroop B sections faster than tle less educated subjects. MCI and AD patients with a 9-year or more education completed the Stroop B section faster then the subjects with education less than 9 years. In order to examine the discriminative validity of the Stroop Test Çapa Form, separated ROC analyzes were performed between healthy-MCI, healthy-AD and MCI-AD groups. Patients with AD completed all subscales of the test in a longer period than the subjects with MCI and healthy subjects. The number of errors in MCI cases were higher than was healthy subjects; and the errors made by subjects of AD were significantly higher than the errors of patients with MCI and healthy subjects. Keywords: Alzheimer's Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, Stroop Test, Çapa Version, Discriminative Validity.