Abstract
The present study was conducted to examine the utility of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA©; Nasreddine et al., 2005) to detect left versus right history of unilateral stroke by use of an archival data set from an inpatient medical rehabilitation hospital. The MoCA © is a brief, cost effective cognitive screener that assesses cognitive functioning through multiple cognitive domains: visuospatial/constructional abilities, executive functioning, attention/concentration/working memory, language, delayed memory (with a strong verbal component), and orientation. Patients with acute, subacute, and chronic stages of stroke (n = 81; 54.3% male; mean age = 69.31, SD = 13.30) in either the right (n = 48) or left hemisphere ( n = 33) were included in the study. Results demonstrated that individuals with right hemispheric stroke performed better than individuals with left hemispheric stroke on the MoCA© total score ( t = 1.59, p = .01), delayed memory (t = 2.67, p = .01), attention/concentration/working memory (t = 2.35, p = .02), and the orientation (t = 2.40, p = .02) cognitive domains. There were no significant differences between left versus right hemispheric stroke patients in the executive functioning, visuospatial/constructional, and language cognitive domains. The findings provide preliminary information for the potential use of the MoCA© to identify hemispheric lateralization damage following stroke. The findings provide a rationale for use of the MoCA © as a screening assessment with stroke patients with unilateral strokes.