Activities of Daily Living and Categorization Skills of Elderly with Cognitive Deficit: A Preliminary Study

Cognitive dysfunction affects the performance of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and the quality of life of people with these deficits and their caregivers. To the knowledge of the authors, to date, there are few studies that focus on knowing the relationship between personal autonomy and deductive reasoning and/or categorization skills, which are necessary for the performance of the ADL. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between ADL and categorization skills in older people. The study included 51 participants: 31 patients with cognitive impairment and 20 without cognitive impairment. Two tests were administered to assess cognitive functions: (1) the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); and (2) the digital version of Riska Object Classification test (ROC-d). In addition, the Routine Tasks Inventory-2 (RTI-2) was applied to determine the level of independence in activities of daily living. People with cognitive impairment performed poorly in categorization tasks with unstructured information (p = 0.006). Also, the results found a high correlation between cognitive functioning and the performance of ADLs (Physical ADL: r = 0.798; p < 0.001; Instrumental ADL: r = 0.740; p < 0.001), a moderate correlation between Physical ADLs and categorization skills (unstructured ROC-d: r = 0.547; p < 0.001; structured ROC-d: r = 0.586; p < 0.001) and Instrumental ADLs and categorization skills in older people (unstructured ROC-d: r = 0.510; p < 0.001; structured ROC-d: r = 0.463; p < 0.001). The ROC-d allows the assessment of categorization skills to be quick and easy, facilitating the assessment process by OT, as well as the accuracy of the data obtained.