Creator of Cognitive Test Trump Took: POTUS Did Better Than 'Most Patients,' 5-Word Recall Especially Tough
The doctor who created the cognitive test taken by President Donald Trump said Trump’s reported score exceeds that of most people who take the test.
Trump recently talked about passing a cognitive test, which resulted in his brain function being the target of jabs.
For example, on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah mocked Trump by saying, “Donald Trump is the only person who can talk about a cognitive test but make me feel that I have brain damage.”
“He’s gone from bragging about his historic Electoral College win to boasting that he can solve the puzzle in a Happy Meal?” Noah said.
Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. The truth behind Trump’s “intelligence test”: pic.twitter.com/p9urfIHc5S
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 24, 2020
Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who developed the test Trump took, appeared Thursday on CNN’s “Out Front with Erin Burnett” to discuss the test.
Burnett asked Nasreddine to assess Trump’s comments claiming he “aced” the test.
“So, when asked about the ease of some of the questions, the president talked about the difficulty of later portions of the test,” Burnett said. “Is that fair, the last five questions are hard and a fully normal person would have trouble with them?”
“Actually, I think he’s referring to the five-word question, because it does — it is challenging. Some people get only two out of five, three out of five. It’s not everyone can get five out of five or 30 out of 30 like I mentioned before,” Nasreddine said.
“Only 10 percent of normal individuals get 30 out of 30,” he said.
Trump, for his part, has said he got a “perfect” score on the test, the Daily Caller reported.
Nasreddine said the purpose of the test was to assess if cognitive function is slipping in order to help provide an early warning of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
But he noted that the test is not easy even for someone not suffering from the disease.
“It could be somewhat hard for somebody who is normal, especially certain questions are harder than others, especially the five-word recall. Most patients do not get the five words,” he said.
As Trump described the test, he had to repeat several words in order, even after a delay.
Nasreddine said that may not sound hard, but many people cannot accomplish it.
“Most normal people don’t get it after five or ten minutes delay. Most of them get 3.7 words. So it’s not that easy to go through the whole testing,” Nasreddine said.
He also said the test was comprehensive in nature.
“This test is meant to assess cognitive functions, meaning that we are assessing which cognitive domains would be effective and neurological illness,” Nasreddine said.
“So we look at memory, the concentration, attention, executive functions, perception. So all these skills are assessed to determine somebody’s cognition is OK.”
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