A tale of two stories: Validity of an alternative story memory test in a sample of older adults

Abstract

Objective: Many patients require repeat neuropsychological evaluations to determine change over time. Repeat evaluations lead to practice effects, which can impact the validity of the assessment. The current study assessed, in older adults, the validity of an alternative set of verbal memory stories created by Newcomer and colleagues (1994).Method: A total 154 of nondemented adults, ages 60 to 92, completed the WMS-III Logical Memory (LM) stories and two Newcomer stories (Carson-Jones) as part of a larger battery of neurocognitive tests. The Carson-Jones stories were scored for: 1) verbatim (traditional) and 2) thematic (developed for this study) accuracy. Story memory variables were compared to each other and additional neurocognitive measures using bivariate correlations. A subset of participants (n=133) completed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and various structural regions (e.g., thickness and volume of medial temporal lobe structures) were used to assess external validity of Carson-Jones stories with hierarchical multiple regression analyses.Results: There was a strong positive correlation between WMS-III LM and Carson-Jones stories for both verbatim and thematic scoring. Both scoring types showed convergent validity with other verbal memory measures (e.g., WMS-III LM and HVLT-R Delay/Learning) and divergent validity with Stroop Word Reading and JOLO. Regarding neuroimaging correlates, Carson-Jones verbatim scoring was significantly associated with left subiculum and left whole hippocampal volume whereas thematic scoring was significantly associated only with left subiculum.Conclusions: Newcomer stories appear to be a valid alternative to WMS-III LM stories in terms of assessing verbal memory in healthy older adults.

Story reading with incidental comprehension and memory: left hemisphere dominance

“…LHI was impaired in relation to non-LHI in both UC and CC, with sensitivity and specificity above 70%. The findings from the present study agree with those of studies that used the narrative as a whole unit, and verbal inputs and outputs [6][7][8]10,12,20,22 , except that the left-lateralization pattern extended beyond the temporal lobe in this study. Also in line with the present findings, concerning the input, activation that was more left-lateralized was previously observed in functional studies for reading than for listening comprehension 13,21 ; and, concerning the output, a UC: uncued condition; CC: cued condition; LHI: patients with left hemisphere injury; RHI: patients with right hemisphere injury; HP: healthy participants.…”

“…Nevertheless, since narrative-specificity in brain function may arise at a hemispheric rather than at a regional level 4 , there is a need for validity studies on the role of cerebral laterality of injury in story comprehension and recall, which have been poorly investigated at a hemispheric level. This need arises also in view of the contradictory results regarding laterality and narrative processing, not only from studies on patients with brain impairments 3,6 , and especially on those with temporal lobe epilepsy [7][8][9][10][11][12] , but also from functional or anatomical studies on healthy subjects 4,5,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] .…”

“…Bilateral involvement and the (theoretically-subtle) interactions among explicit, implicit, and working memory have been increasingly incorporated into new studies on narrative processing 4,5,16,[24][25][26][27] . In parallel, narratives as whole units, to be understood and/or remembered, have been more frequently examined in natural settings [6][7][8][10][11][12]20,22 . Other than this, they have generally been used as the reference context for interpreting experimental manipulations with the aim of assessing attention to selected story features 14,16,18,23 .…”

Cognitive Correlates of Digital Clock Drawing Metrics in Older Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment

“…Requiring episodic memory and performance is associated with left subiculum and hippocampal volume [29] Decreased performance, particularly immediate recall, is observed in temporal lobe resection patients [30]. Variable of interest: total delay recall.…”

Auditory and Visual Versions of the WMS III Logical Memory Subtest: The Effect of Relative Importance of Information Units on Forgetting Rate

“…The LM subtest of the WMS is the most widely known and used neuropsychological test assessing complex verbal memory (Trifilio et al, 2020). Story memory tests were designed to assess everyday learning and remembering of new declarative information, and have been validated in this respect (Squire, 1987).…”