Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Dec;32(8):461-467.
doi: 10.1177/1533317517722630. Epub 2017 Jul 27.

The TMA-93: A New Memory Test for Alzheimer's Disease in Illiterate and Less Educated People

Didier Maillet  1   2 , Pauline Narme  1   3 , Hélène Amieva  4 , Fanny Matharan  4 , Olivier Bailon  1 , Hervé Le Clésiau  5 , Catherine Belin  1   3
Affiliations

The TMA-93: A New Memory Test for Alzheimer's Disease in Illiterate and Less Educated People

Didier Maillet et al. Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Demen. 2017 Dec.

Abstract

The present study aimed at validating the Memory Associative Test of the district of Seine-Saint-Denis (TMA)-93, a new test of episodic memory. The TMA-93 was proposed to mostly less educated and multicultural elderly population composed of 376 healthy controls (HC) and 94 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The construct validity was checked by studying correlations with a widely used memory test (the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test [FCSRT]) in the subsample of literate patients. Results showed that (i) all the TMA-93 scores of the patients with AD were lower than those of the HC, (ii) the TMA-93 total score identified patients with AD with a high sensitivity (88%) and very high specificity (97%), and (iii) the TMA-93 total score was strongly correlated with both free recall and total recall scores of the FCSRT. Taken together, results showed that the TMA-93 is a reliable tool to assess episodic memory in a multicultural, less educated, or illiterate population, with good construct validity for AD diagnostic accuracy.

Keywords: associative memory; cognitive assessment; cross-cultural neuropsychology; dementia; literacy; memory test.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Illustration of the TMA-93 procedure: (A) examples of paired associates to name and memorize and (B) presentation of the first stimulus during the first cued recall.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed, Text Revised). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Press; 2000.
    1. McKhann GM, Knopman DS, Chertkow H, et al. . The diagnosis of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease: recommendations from the National Institute on Aging–Alzheimer’s Association workgroups on diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimers Dement. 2011;7(3):263–269. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brucki SM. Illiteracy and dementia. Dement. Neuropsychol. 2010;4(3):153–157. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ardila A, Bertolucci PH, Braga LW, et al. . Illiteracy: the neuropsychology of cognition without reading. Arch Clin Neuropsychol. 2010;25(8):689–712. - PubMed
    1. Mitrushina MN, Boone KB, D’Elia LF. Handbook of Normative Data for Neuropsychological Assessment. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; 1998.

Publication types