Telephone administration of the Mental Alternation Test: sensitivity to cognitive decline and practice effects across midlife and late life.

Background: We evaluated the utility of the telephone-administered Mental Alternation Test (MAT, an oral variant of the Trail-Making Test) for remote assessment of cognitive functioning in older adults. We examined (1) the sensitivity of MAT scores to cognitive change across 4 age groups, (2) practice effects associated with repeat administration, and (3) the uniformity of practice effects across age groups. Methods: Community-dwelling volunteers were recruited randomly and categorized as young-middle-aged (45–54 years; n = 51), middle-aged (55–64 years; n = 58), young-old (65–74 years; n = 43) or old-old (75–85 years; n = 43). The participants completed the MAT twice within 2 weeks. The data were analyzed using mixed ANOVA. Results: We found an effect of age on MAT performance [F(3, 191) = 11.37; p Conclusions: The MAT was sensitive to cognitive decline in older adulthood. Practice effects were measurable but uniform across the observed age cohorts. As a brief telephone-administered test, the MAT represents a promising measure of cognitive functioning in older adults that is feasible for use in large-scale epidemiological studies.