Predicting Everyday Functional Abilities of Dementia Patients with the Mini Mental State Exam

The Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) is a widely used cognitive screening measure. The purpose of the present study was to assess how 5 specific clusters of MMSE items (i.e., subscores) correlate with and predict specific areas of daily functioning in patients with dementia. Sixty-one patients with varied forms of dementia were administered the MMSE and an observation-based daily functional test (the Direct Assessment of Functional Status; DAFS). The results revealed that the orientation and attention subscores of the MMSE correlated most significantly with nearly all of the functional domains. The MMSE language items correlated with all but the DAFS shopping and time orientation tasks, while the MMSE recall items correlated with the DAFS time orientation and shopping tasks. Stepwise regression analyses found that among the MMSE subscores, orientation was the single, best independent predictor of most of the DAFS functional domains, with language, attention and recall subscores accounting for additional variance on DAFS functional tasks. These results indicate that the MMSE is not only a good cognitive screening tool, but its specific subsores can predict functional disabilities in patients with dementia.