Validation of the Attention, Memory, and Frontal-Executive Abilities Screening Test (AMFAST) in children, adolescents, and young adults with complex medical conditions

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to validate the Attention, Memory, and Frontal-Executive Abilities Screening Test (AMFAST) in a sample of children, adolescents, and young adults with complex medical conditions characterized by frontal-subcortical dysfunction. Toward this goal, we first report on scoring corrections to the AMFAST for younger participants (ages 8–10), thereby expanding its use beyond the age range (i.e., ages 11+) that we had validated in our previous study. We then examined the diagnostic utility of the AMFAST at identifying different levels of neurocognitive dysfunction in a clinical sample of 61 children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 8–20) with complex medical conditions who also underwent comprehensive neuropsychological testing. We identified two AMFAST cutoff scores; one that optimally distinguished participants with significant neurocognitive dysfunction from non-impaired participants and another that differentiated participants with more subtle, mild neurocognitive dysfunction from non-impaired participants. These findings demonstrate that the AMFAST is a highly effective screening test that can be used to identify varying levels of frontal-subcortical deficits in younger patient populations.

KEYWORDS:

• cognitive screening
• pediatric neuropsychology
• attention
• memory
• executive functioning

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Beril Yaffe, Rebecca Avila-Rieger, Libby Sebrow, Saul Beck, Aditya Kulkarni, Catherine O’Brien, and Christine Bushell for their assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Previously known as the Attention, Memory, and Frontal Abilities Screening Test.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.