Use of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in Evaluations of Adjudicative Competency
This archival study explored the impact of performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) a brief cognitive screen performed as part of a mental status examination (MSE) on adjudicative competency opinions provided for 194 criminal defendants, in examinations that did not include a competency specific instrument. The MoCA's suggested cutoff of 26 as indicative of "mild cognitive impairment" was not determinative of examiners' conclusions regarding competency related capacities. However, when scores were considered dimensionally, MoCA performance during the MSE accounted for additional significant variance in examiners' competency opinions, when added to a logistic regression model containing age and presence of psychotic symptoms.