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Test (SDMT)
Agenda
1.
2.
Testing
3.
4.
Wrap it Up
Purpose
Screening
Assesses
(Smith, 1973)
Time: 5 minutes
Cognitive Impairment
Mild: may begin to notice change in cognitive functions, but still able to
function in everyday life
Testing
(Smith, 1973)
DEMONSTRATION
Scoring
Score: number of correct substitutions in each 90-secondinterval (excludes the first 10 practice boxes)
(Smith, 1973)
Standard Deviation
Mean
About
92%
within
1.5 s.d.
of mean
Standard deviation:
how spread out the
numbers are from
the mean
i.e. 40 year old individual with college education, a written score of 37 or less would
suggest possible impairment
(Smith, 1973)
Low Score:
(Smith, 1973)
46 year old, 12
years or less education, score of 33
(Smith, 1973)
education, score of 28
(Smith, 1973)
Adult norms obtained using two samples of 420 and 887 adult
volunteers (N=1,307)
Evenly distributed into six age groups (age groups on normative Table
3)
Age and education impacted score, gender did not therefore gender not
separated on normative table
(Smith, 1973)
Reliability
Validity
(Smith, 1973)
Initial performance on SDMT by adults with acute CVA studied (Burkalnd &
Smith, 1967)
Written and oral SDMT scores examined for three classifications of adults;
independent, dependent, and deceased
All mean scores fell at least 1.5 standard deviations below the mean for
the norm group, indicating cognitive impairment
(Smith, 1973)
Wrap it Up
Critique
Questions
References
Centers for Disease Control. (2011). Cognitive Impairment: A Call for Action, Now!
Retrieved from
http://www.cdc.gov/aging/pdf/cognitive_impairment/cogimp_poilicy_final.pdf
Lpez-Gngora, M., Querol, L., and Escartnone, A. (2015). A one-year follow-up study of
the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) and the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test
(PASAT) in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: an appraisal of comparative
longitudinal sensitivity. BMC Neurology, 15(1), 1-8 8p. doi:10.1186/s12883-015-0296-2
Smith, A. (1973). Symbol Digit Modalities Test [Manual]. Torrance, CA: Western
Psychological Services.