A validity study of the Working Group's Autobiographical Memory Test for individuals with moderate to severe intellectual disability.
The Working Group memory test fades after one year and only hints at Down-related dementia, so use it narrowly and with caution.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pyo et al. (2011) checked if a new memory test spots dementia in adults with moderate to severe intellectual disability.
They compared two groups: adults with Down syndrome who later showed dementia signs, and adults with other causes of ID.
Each person told personal memories to a tester. The team scored how rich and clear the stories were.
What they found
At first, the new test looked great. The Down-dementia group scored much lower than the other group.
One year later the gap had vanished. The test no longer told the groups apart.
The tool only worked for Down-related dementia. It also gave narrow scores, so small changes are hard to see.
How this fits with other research
Gotham et al. (2015) saw the same warning. Standard mood scales give only weak signals in verbally fluent adults with ASD. Together the papers say: take care when you borrow tests built for the general population.
Salb et al. (2015) give happier news. Simple fall-risk tests like Timed Up-and-Go stay stable when you retest adults with ID. The difference is the outcome: balance is easy to repeat, memory stories are not.
Young et al. (2025) add a roadmap. Their 2025 review picked PHQ-9 and HADS as the best depression tools for autistic youth. The lesson: pick tools that already have ID/ASD data, or build new ones, instead of hoping a general test will fit.
Why it matters
You now have a red flag: the Working Group Autobiographical Memory Test is not ready for wide dementia screening in ID. If you serve adults with Down syndrome you can try it, but track each person over time and pair it with other signs. For any other ID cause, choose a different screener or create ID-specific tasks. Always check retest data before adding a tool to your protocol.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the validity of the Working Group's Autobiographical Memory Test as a dementia screening tool for individuals with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities (ID). Twenty-one participants with Dementia of Alzheimer's Type (DAT) and moderate to severe ID and 42 controls with similar levels of ID were tested. The majority were re-tested one year after the initial evaluation. The DAT group scored considerably lower than the control group on the initial evaluation. The controls with DS exhibited a considerable decline on the follow-up evaluation whereas other participants exhibited little changes. This demonstrates an insignificant overall difference between the DAT group and the control group on the follow-up evaluation. Virtually all participants exhibited the same scores on 3 out of 6 test items and the percentage of participants who correctly answered the remaining three test items were not significantly different from the DAT or control groups. In conclusion, the Working Group's Autobiographical Memory Test may be useful as a dementia screening tool for individuals with moderate to severe ID from DS when validated with a large sample size study. However, it is questionable whether this test is a reliable dementia screening tool for individuals with moderate to severe ID from non-DS etiologies. This test has a significant psychometric weakness because of the restricted score variability among the participants.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2010.08.011