Return to search

Variation and interactional non-standardization in neuropsychological tests: The case of the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination

Yes / The Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE-111) is a neuropsychological test used in clinical practice to inform a dementia diagnosis. The ACE-111 relies on standardized administration so that patients’ scores can be interpreted by comparison with normative scores. The test is delivered and responded to in interaction between clinicians and patients, which places talk-in-interaction at the heart of its administration. In this article, conversation analysis (CA) is used to investigate how the ACE-111 is delivered in clinical practice. Based on analysis of 40 video/audio-recorded memory clinic consultations in which the ACE-111 was used, we have found that administrative standardization is rarely achieved in practice. There was evidence of both (a) interactional variation in the way the clinicians introduce the test and (b) interactional non-standardization during its implementation. We show that variation and interactional non-standardization have implications for patients’ understanding and how they might respond to particular questions. / Partially funded by a grant by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Program (Grant Reference Number PB-PG-0211-24079).

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/17317
Date25 September 2019
CreatorsJones, Danielle K., Wilkinson, R., Jackson, C., Drew, P.
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, Published version
Rights© 2019 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), CC-BY-NC

Page generated in 0.0019 seconds