Convergent Validity of In-Person Assessment of Inpatients With Traumatic Brain Injury Using the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT).
Christina A DiBlasio, Thomas A Novack, Edwin W Cook and 2 others
PMID 33656489WHAT IT FOUND
The BTACT composite scores align well with standard neuropsychological tests in patients with severe brain injury, but individual subtests for reasoning and speed do not.
Use the overall or domain composite scores for monitoring recovery. Do not rely on single subtest scores for clinical decisions.
Key findings
01BTACT composite scores for overall cognition, memory, and executive function showed strong positive correlations with corresponding neuropsychological test composites.
02Individual BTACT subtests for verbal learning, memory, working memory, and fluency correlated significantly with matching neuropsychological tests, but subtests for reasoning and processing speed did not reach significance.
03More than 92% of participants in the early inpatient rehabilitation stage were able to complete the BTACT.
STILL TO COME
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What it does not show
The sample size was small (55 participants), and the number of participants completing specific test pairs ranged from 21 to 54, which reduced the power to detect moderate correlations. The participants had severe cognitive impairments, which restricted the range of scores and made it difficult to compare performance across different levels of ability. Not all participants completed every neuropsychological test due to fatigue and severity of injury, leading to variability in the components that made up the composite scores. The study was conducted in a specialized inpatient rehabilitation center, so the results may not generalize to patients with mild traumatic brain injury or those further out from their injury.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use individual BTACT subtest scores for inductive reasoning or processing speed to make clinical decisions. These specific subtests did not correlate significantly with standard neuropsychological measures in this study, likely due to small sample sizes and severe impairment, so they should not be treated as validated standalone tools.