Patterns of Performance on the Modified Cued Recall Test in Spanish Adults With Down Syndrome With and Without Dementia.
The Spanish mCRT cleanly separates adults with Down syndrome who have dementia from those who do not.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Benejam et al. (2015) gave the Spanish Modified Cued Recall Test to adults with Down syndrome.
Some adults also had dementia. The team compared scores between the two groups.
What they found
Adults with Down syndrome and dementia scored lower than those without it.
Age was the biggest reason for lower scores.
How this fits with other research
Tsao et al. (2015) saw wide individual differences and no clear age drop, but they left out people who already had dementia. Bessy kept those people in, so age looked more powerful.
Baker et al. (2025) followed the same adults for years. They confirm mCRT scores slip as dementia worsens and warn us to stick with one test version.
Fernández-Alcaraz et al. (2020) show a flat profile across verbal and visual tasks in Down syndrome. The mCRT memory drop therefore stands out as a useful red flag.
Why it matters
You now have a quick Spanish memory screen that spots trouble in adults with Down syndrome. Pair it with watchful caregiver reports. Start annual testing at about 35 years. A falling score gives you an early head start on support plans, safety talks, and referral for a full dementia work-up.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The assessment of memory decline in people with intellectual disability (ID) is more difficult than in the general population, due to a lack of appropriate instruments and to preexisting cognitive impairment. The aim of this study was to describe performance of healthy adults with Down syndrome (healthy-DS; prospectively cohort) on a Spanish version of the modified Cued Recall Test (mCRT). We also recruited retrospectively a cohort of DS subjects with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DS-DAT). Healthy-DS obtained higher scores on free recall and total score than DS-DAT. Age was the main factor associated with decreasing mCRT scores. The mCRT was useful in DS subjects with ID at the upper end of the spectrum or ID in the middle range of the spectrum, and discriminated well between DS subjects with and without DAT.
American journal on intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1352/1944-7558-120.6.481