Personal and Extrapersonal Orientation in Persons with Alzheimer Disease: Reliability and Validity of Three Assessments

Abstract

This paper provides definitions of personal and extrapersonal orientation, describes assessments, and presents a study that examined the reliability and validity of these assessments for use by occupational therapists with early Alzheimer clients. Personal orientation was evaluated using the Right-left Discrimination Test and the Road-Map Test. Extrapersonal orientation was evaluated using the Map-Reading Test. These assessments were administered to 25 early Alzheimer subjects and 97 control subjects. Each of the Alzheimer subjects returned for two more visits, one for the test-retest reliability and another for the inter-rater reliability. The Road-Map Test and the Map-Reading Test met the criteria for adequate test-retest and inter-rater reliability, and intra-class correlation coefficients ranged from .71 to .96. However, the coefficients for the Right-left Discrimination test were lower (about .50). All three tests were able to discriminate between the two groups. None of the scores correlated with the Functional Spatial Abilities Questionnaire, a measure of geographic orientation. Suggestions for further research are provided.