National Adult Reading Test

rdf:langString National Adult Reading Test

rdf:langString National Adult Reading Test

rdf:langString estimating premorbid intelligence

rdf:langString The National Adult Reading Test (NART) is a widely accepted and commonly used method in clinical settings for estimating premorbid intelligence levels of English-speaking patients with dementia in neuropsychological research and practice. Such tests are called hold tests as these abilities are thought to be spared, or "held" following neurological injury or decline.The NART was developed by Hazel Nelson in the 1980s in Britain and published in 1982. The test comprises 50 written words in British English which all have irregular spellings (e.g. "aisle"), so as to test the participant's vocabulary rather than their ability to apply regular pronunciation rules. The manual includes equations for converting NART scores to predicted IQ scores on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The NART is widely used in research settings because a measure of premorbid intelligence is rarely available. However, the Lothian Birth Cohort Study has such data. Researchers from this study demonstrated that the correlation between NART scores and age 11 IQ was moderately high at 0.60. This suggests that the NART can be used as a hold test, as a proxy for premorbid intelligence.