Ability of the Mini-Mental State Examination to Predict the Neuropsychological Performance of Hispanic Patients with Minor Neurocognitive Disorder

The Mini-Mental State Examination is perhaps the most frequently used instrument to determine level of cognitive functioning. However, while it is cited in a wide range of research studies, it is not necessarily the focus of study itself. The purpose of this study was to establish the ability of the MMSE total score to predict the level of neurocognitive functioning of two samples of Hispanic pa-tients with minor neurocognitive disorder in a battery of neuropsychological tests. Two samples of patients, one obtained in 2009 and a second one in 2013 were grouped into high scoring and low scoring in the MMSE. The results showed that the MMSE total score was predictive of the per-formance of both samples in neuropsychological tests designed to assess attention, language, non-verbal memory, and visual-constructional praxis. Scores in an auditory verbal memory task was not predicted by the total score of the MMSE. It was concluded that the MMSE could serve as a very adequate instrument to predict neurocognitive functioning in patients with memory com-plaints. The consistency of findings between the two independent samples gave further credenc