Reliability of direct-to-home teleneuropsychological assessment: a within-subject design study


Yildirim E., SONCU BÜYÜKİŞCAN E., Kalem S. A., GÜRVİT İ. H.

CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST, 2025 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/13854046.2025.2451247
  • Dergi Adı: CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, PASCAL, Educational research abstracts (ERA), EMBASE, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MEDLINE, Psycinfo
  • Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydınlar Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Objective: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to continue diagnosis and treatment processes, in addition to scientific research, led to a rapid shift towards direct-to-home tele-neuropsychology administrations, the reliability and validity of which had not been clearly established then. This study, therefore, aimed to examine the reliability of direct-to-home tele-neuropsychological assessment (TNP). Method: The sample included 105 cognitively healthy individuals aged between 50-83 years, and 47 patients diagnosed with neurocognitive disorders (mild cognitive impairment and early-stage Alzheimer's type dementia). All participants underwent both face-to-face and teleneuropsychological assessments in a counterbalanced order. Results: The results revealed that performances across measures of attention, working memory, verbal fluency, verbal and visual memory, and visual perception were comparable across assessment modalities. Intraclass correlation coefficients of the tests ranged from .54 to .92. Conclusions: The findings of the study provide support for direct-to-home teleneuropsychological assessment among patients with neurocognitive disorders. Neuropsychological tests relying on verbal administration and independent of motor performance may represent a reliable alternative for this patient group when administered in settings where external distractions or technological limitations are controlled. For cognitively healthy individuals, on the other hand, the reliability of the TNP application is more questionable for memory and some executive function tests and therefore needs further exploration.