Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA): Normative study for the Portuguese population

Abstract

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a brief cognitive screening instrument with good psychometric features and an excellent sensitivity in the early detection of mild cognitive decline. The MoCA was applied to a community-based sample of cognitively healthy adults (n = 650), stratified according to sociodemographic variables (age, gender, educational level, geographic region, geographic localization, and residence area), with a distribution similar to that observed in the Portuguese population. The normative data were determined according to age and education as these were the sociodemographic variables that most significantly contributed to the prediction of the MoCA scores, explaining 49% of their variance.

Keywords:

• Norms
• Cognitive screening
• Mild cognitive impairment
• Alzheimer's disease

Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Cristina Martins for the English revision of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through a PhD fellowship (SFRH/BD/38019/2007) and by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) through the project “Memória, avaliação funcional e qualidade de vida: Estudos de validade e normas para a população portuguesa” (Memory, functional assessment and quality of life: Validation studies and norms for the Portuguese population; Proc. 74569, SDH-22 Neurociências).

Notes

¹The total score of the MoCA refers to the real score without one correction point for education effects, considered in the original study (Nasreddine et al., 2005).