Pearson - Clinical and Talent Assessment - Australia and New Zealand

Dementia is hard to determine in people with intellectual disabilities. With the DLD it is possible to assess dementia at an early stage. The items are comparable to questions which an expert diagnostician would ask the carers. They are primarily based on international guidelines for dementia diagnosis.

The DLD, an informant-based questionnaire, consists of 50 items and eight subscales:

Scoring

The questionnaire is provided with a simple linear score system in which the items have three response categories: 0 = no deficit, 1 point = moderate deficit, 2 points = severe deficit.

Combined scores on the first three subscales (Short-term memory, Long-term memory and Orientation) are indicated as the Sum of Cognitive Scores (SCS). Combined scores on subscales 4 through to 8 (Speech, Practical skills, Mood, Activity and interest, and Behavioural disturbance) as the Sum of Social Scores (SOS).

It is advised to routinely perform a first scoring of the DLD before any functional deterioration is observed, because longitudinal judgement of DLD scores provide the most reliable diagnosis.