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Penn State Screen of Frontal and Temporal Dysfunction Syndromes
Penn State Screen of Frontal and Temporal Dysfunction Syndromes
| Availability |
Parts of the PSS-FTDS are copyrighted and must be obtained separately. Please contact the screen developer for details: Claire Flaherty-Craig, PhD: cflahertycraig@hmc.psu.edu. Alternatively, contact test publishers/authors for screen components:
Letter Fluency/Animal Naming: public domain. Norms: Gladsjo et al., 1999 and Abrahams et al., 2000.
Cognistat: The Northern California Behavioral Group. Manual for COGNISTAT (The Neurobehavioral Cognitive Status Examination). P.O. Box 460, Fairfax, CA: 94978. www/cognistat.com
Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Exam (BDAE) https://www.pearsonclinical.com.au/products/view/522
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| Classification |
Supplemental: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
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| Short Description of Instrument |
Background: The PSS-FTDS was piloted in a large multidisciplinary ALS clinic and has been used by multiple sites in the US via collaboration with Penn State.
Construct measured: Letter fluency, judgment, attention, repetition, category fluency, similarities, reading comprehension, constructional praxis, naming, orientation, mental calculations, premorbid intelligence, and behavior.
Generic vs. disease specific: FTD specific and tailored for ALS. Administration controls for motor weakness and allows for spoken or written word responses to verbal measures.
Means of administration: By trained personnel, usually a nurse or other non- neuropsychologist trained to administer.
Administration time: 20 minutes if the FBI is completed by one examiner while a second examiner administers cognitive testing to patient. Otherwise, time required may be longer.
Intended respondent: Patient except for the FBI, which is administered to the caregiver.
# of items : Multiple sub-parts as listed below, many with several items.
# of subscales and names of sub-scales : There are 6 subscales: 1.Phonemic Fluency
American National Adult Reading Test (AMNART)
5. Oral Reading via the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Exam (BDAE) 6.The Frontal Behavior Inventory (FBI)
Strengths: 1) ALS-tailored; 2) More information than very brief (5 minute) screens; 3) FBI can be administered to caregiver while PSSFTS is being administered to patient; 4) has been used successfully in a large multidisciplinary ALS clinic.
Weaknesses: 1) At 20 minutes for administration, this is longer than some brief exams; 2) cannot be self-administered; 3) some parts (NART and BDAE) cannot be administered to subject with low intelligibility; 4) scoring requires multiple normative databases.
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| Scoring |
Letter Fluency and Category Fluency are assessed and scored as per Gladsjo et al., 1999. For those with motor weakness, a fluency ratio is used as per Abrahams et al., 2000.
NART, COGNISAT and BDAE are scored per published guidelines. A score of 27 or higher on the FBI is consistent with frontal lobe dementia (Kertesz et al., 1997).
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| Rationale/Justification |
Feasibility: Able to be administered in a large multidisciplinary ALS clinic.
Reliability: Good studies for component parts.
Validity: No published validity studies on overall instrument for use in ALS. Excellent validity studies available for component parts.
Sensitivity to Change: Not assessed for overall instrument.
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| References |
Flaherty-Craig C, Eslinger P, Stephens B, Simmons Z. A rapid screening battery to identify frontal dysfunction in patients with ALS. Neuro. 2006;67:2070-2072.
Abrahams S, Leigh PN, Harvey A, Vythelingum GN, Grise D, Goldstein YH. Verbal fluency and executive dysfunction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neuropsychologia 2000;38:734-747.
Flaherty-Craig C, Brothers A, Dearman B, Eslinger P, Simmons Z. Penn State screen exam for the detection of frontal and temporal dysfunction syndromes: application to ALS. Amyotroph Lateral Scler. 2009;10(2):107-112.
Flaherty-Craig CV, Brothers A, Yang C, Svoboda R, Simmons Z. Declines in problem solving and anosognosia in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: application of Guilford's structure of intellect theory. Cogn Behav Neurol. 2011;24(1):26-34.
Gladsjo JA, Schuman CC, Evans JD, Peavy GM, Miller SW, Heaton RK. Norms for letter and category fluency: Demographic corrections for age, education and ethnicity. Assessment. 1999;6:147-178.
Kertesz A, Davidson W and Fox H. Frontal Behavioral Inventory: Diagnostic critertia for Frontal Lobe Dementia. Can J Neurolog Sci. 1997;24(1):29-35.
Wicks P, Abrahams S, Leigh PN, Goldstein LH. A rapid screening battery to identify frontal dysfunction in patients with ALS. Neurology. 2007;69(1):118-119; author reply 119-120.
Document last updated July 2019
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