Development and classification accuracy of an automated cognitive screening tool combining working memory and connected speech tasks for early detection of cognitive impairment in primary care.

Introduction: Cognitive screening to detect mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia in primary care settings has proven to be a challenging task. The ideal solution would be a brief, yet sensitive, tool appropriate for use with individuals from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds that requires limited time and expertise from clinic staff. The purpose of this project was (1) to develop an automated cognitive screening tool incorporating cognitive and speech/language data using machine learning techniques for potential use in primary care settings and (2) to compare its classification accuracy to an established cognitive screening measure.

Methods: Participants were 53 cognitively normal and 51 cognitively impaired older adults. Each completed a working memory (WM) and four speaking tasks, followed by a second administration of WM to investigate the added utility of practice effects. Bayesian additive regression trees were used to test nine models, and the Quick Mild Cognitive Impairment screen was administered as a comparator.

Results: The top feature set consisted of both administrations of the WM task and a personal narrative task and achieved a cross-validated classification accuracy (area under the receiver operating characteristics curve) of 0.84, which was slightly better than the comparator.

Discussion: Combining WM and acoustic and linguistic variables derived from connected speaking tasks discriminated cognitively normal from cognitively impaired groups with a high degree of accuracy.

Highlights: Working memory and speaking tasks were used for detection of cognitive impairment.This combination distinguished cognitively normal from impaired older adults.This automated tool may overcome barriers to cognitive screening in primary care.