Standardization of the Czech Version of the Tower of London Test - Administration, Scoring, Validity
Abstract
Aim: The aim of the study was to standardize (test construction, administration and scoring) the Czech version of the Tower of London test developed by Tim Shallice in 1982 (TOL). We sought to determine potential of the TOL to differentiate between patients with Parkinson's disease mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) and control participants and to provide preliminary normative data.
Introduction: TOL is a measure of planning and problem solving ability, subsumed under executive functions. There are several standardized TOL versions available.
The original is the version developed by Shallice in 1982. Standardization of its Czech version is still lacking.
Method: Sample of 76 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) underwent neuropsychological diagnostic procedure for PD-MCI. Thirty-five PD patients met the criteria for PD-MCI.
These were matched according to age and education with 70 subjects from a control sample (CS). Results: There was a statistically significant difference between PD-MCI and CS in planning ability in both scoring systems (Si and S2) proposed by Shallice: Si (p = 0.004) and S2 (p < 0.001).
Area under the curve was 0.64 in S1 and 0.73 in S2. S1 only correlated significantly with education (p = 0.02), TOL performance was unrelated to age and education.
Conclusions: This study standardizes TOL Czech version. Our findings support the discriminative validity of TOL Czech version on a classical model of executive dysfunction represented by PD-MCI.
We provide preliminary normative data for elderly people, thus enabling an estimation of planning deficit.