INECO Frontal Screening: an Instrument to assess Executive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Although several brief sensitive screening tools are available to detect executive dysfunction, few have been developed to quickly assess executive functioning. The INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) is a brief tool which has proved be useful for the assessment of the executive functions in patients with dementia. The aim of this study was to explore whether the IFS is as sensitive and specific as the BADS, a battery designed to assess the dysexecutive syndrome, in schizophrenia. Our sample comprised a group of 34 schizophrenic patients (Mean age = 39.59, DP = 10.697) and 31 healthy controls (Mean age = 35.52, DP = 10.211). To all groups were administered the BADS, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and IFS. The results suggest that schizophrenic patients performed significantly worse than the control group in all tests (p < .05). The IFS total score was 13.29 for the experimental group and 26.21 for the control group (p < .001). Considering a cut-off of 14 points, the IFS sensitivity was 100% and specificity 56% in detection of executive dysfunction in schizophrenia, compared with the BADS, that if we consider a cut-off of 11 points, was a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 50%. Thus, IFS is a brief, sensitive and specific tool for the detection of executive dysfunction in schizophrenia.

Evaluation of the INECO Frontal Screening and the Frontal Assessment Battery in Peruvian patients with Alzheimer's disease and behavioral variant Frontotemporal dementia

“…The IFS was designed to include several subtests in order to measure, in an efficient way, as many EF as possible. Previous studies have shown promising diagnostic performance [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] . Thus, it arises as an encouraging alternative for early detection of dementia cases.…”

The INECO Frontal Screening for the Evaluation of Executive Dysfunction in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease: Evidence from Quantitative MRI in a CADASIL Cohort from Colombia

“…Evidence further suggests that the IFS outperforms similar screening tool of executive dysfunction, namely the Frontal Assessment Battery, in differentiating normal controls from subjects with neurocognitive disorders (Custodio et al, 2016;Gleichgerrcht et al, 2011). In addition to age-related neurocognitive disorders, deficits on the IFS have been observed in various psychiatric conditions associated with executive dysfunction, including major depression, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Baez et al, 2014;Reyes et al, 2009;Silva, Monteiro, & Lopes, 2014). Taken together, these results support the validity of the IFS in detecting executive function deficits in a wide range of clinical populations.…”

Emotional descriptions increase accidental harm punishment and its cortico-limbic signatures during moral judgment in autism

“…Cognitive state was assessed with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) 61 (Supplementary Material 2.1 ), a brief screening tool sensitive to cognitive dysfunction in adult ASD 62 , 63 . Executive functions were evaluated with the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) 64 (Supplementary Material 2.2 ), a validated battery for the detection of executive-frontal dysfunction in adults with neuropsychiatric conditions 65 – 67 .…”