Assessment of Functional Ability of People with Alzheimer's Disease

The aim of this study was to examine the sensitivity of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) in discriminating between independent people, those with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) requiring minimal assistance to live in the community (DAT-min) and those with DAT requiring moderate to maximal assistance (DAT-mod). The subjects comprised 329 non-disabled older adults, 167 people with DAT-min and 292 with DAT-mod. The AMPS was used to measure the subjects' ADL motor and ADL process abilities. Significant main effects were seen for ADL motor and ADL process abilities. All three groups differed significantly in both motor and process mean ability measures and the proportion of people with DAT with ability measures below AMPS cut-off measures increased significantly as the functional level decreased. The ADL process scale was a more discriminative measure of ability to function in the community than was the ADL motor scale.