Does the Order of Item Difficulty of the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination Add Anything to Subdomain Scores in the Clinical Assessment of Dementia?

BACKGROUND: The Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE) is used to measure cognition across a range of domains in dementia. Identifying the order in which cognitive decline occurs across items, and whether this varies between dementia aetiologies could add more information to subdomain scores. METHOD: ACE-Revised data from 350 patients were split into three groups: Alzheimer's type (n = 131), predominantly frontal (n = 119) and other frontotemporal lobe degenerative disorders (n = 100). Results of factor analysis and Mokken scaling analysis were compared. RESULTS: Principal component analysis revealed one factor for each group. Confirmatory factor analysis found that the one-factor model fit two samples poorly. Mokken analyses revealed different item ordering in terms of difficulty for each group. CONCLUSION: The different patterns for each diagnostic group could aid in the separation of these different types of dementia.