ArticleAge and ageing2018
Do people with Alzheimer's disease improve with repeated testing? Unpacking the role of content and context in retest effects.
Article in Age and ageing, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Non-invasive Brain Stimulation in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment-A State-of-the-Art Review on Methodological Characteristics and Stimulation Parameters.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Differences in Cognitive Aging Assessments Associated With Retest Effects.JAMA network open · 2026Trial
- Effect of perioperative probiotic intervention on postoperative cognitive dysfunction in elderly patients: a randomized double- blinded and placebo-controlled trial.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Dancing through time: Cognitive changes over six years of community dance in Parkinson's disease.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2026Observational
- Longitudinal functional connectivity during rest and task is differentially related to Alzheimer's pathology and episodic memory in older adults.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Motor-cognitive interactions in older adults: reliability and comparison of Trail Walking and Stepping Trail Making Tests.European geriatric medicine · 2025Article
- Practice effects persist over two decades of cognitive testing: Implications for longitudinal research.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Pick a PACC: Comparing domain-specific and general cognitive composites in Alzheimer disease research.Neuropsychology · 2024Article
- How to assess cognitive decline when test administration changes across study waves? Harmonizing cognitive scores across waves in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.Journal of Alzheimer's disease reports · 2024Article
- Pragmatic approaches to handling practice effects in longitudinal cognitive aging research.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2023Article
- Misinterpreting cognitive change over multiple timepoints: When practice effects meet age-related decline.Neuropsychology · 2023Article
- The development of an automated machine learning pipeline for the detection of Alzheimer's Disease.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Practice effects in performance outcome measures in patients living with neurologic disorders - A systematic review.Heliyon · 2022Review
- Practice effects in cognitive assessments three years later in non-carriers but not in symptom-free mutation carriers of autosomal-dominant Alzheimer's disease: Exemplifying procedural learning and memory?Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Article
- Cognitive practice effects delay diagnosis of MCI: Implications for clinical trials.Alzheimer's & dementia (New York, N. Y.) · 2022Article
- Practice Effects in Mild Cognitive Impairment Increase Reversion Rates and Delay Detection of New Impairments.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Article
- Chewing function and related parameters as a function of the degree of dementia: Is there a link between the brain and the mouth?Journal of oral rehabilitation · 2021Article
- Predicting Dementia With Prefrontal Electroencephalography and Event-Related Potential.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Article
- Cognitive Practice Effects Delay Diagnosis; Implications for Clinical Trials.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Objective: retest effects may be attributed to 'repeated content' in neuropsychological tests such as words in word list-learning tests, or the 'testing context' which involves procedural memory and reduced test anxiety following repeated administration. Alzheimer's Disease (AD) severely impairs episodic memory, so longitudinal cognitive testing among people with dementia may reveal the relative contributions of content versus context to retest effects in neuropsychological testing. Method: we used data from the Critical Path Institute's repository of placebo arm data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of dementia conducted by participating pharmaceutical companies (N = 990 people, 4,170 study visits, up to 2.4 years of follow-up). To estimate retest effects on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), we used linear regressions with random effects for people and time, adjusting for age, sex and race, and longitudinal quantile regressions. Results: average MMSE score (16.6 points, SD = 5.5, range 1, 27) declined by 2.0 points/year (95% confidence interval, CI: -2.3, -1.8). Mean retest effect was 0.6 points (95% CI: 0.4, 0.8) at second assessment (average 4 months after baseline). Retest effects were similar among participants with and without any recall on the short-delay word recall subscale score at baseline, and at the 30th, 50th and 70th percentiles of the MMSE distribution, suggesting similar retest effects across the spectrum from mild to severe cases of dementia. Conclusions: retest effects are apparent in people with dementia despite reduced episodic memory, suggesting a prominent role of the testing context in RCTs and cohort studies.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.