Background: The Cognistat is a commonly used cognitive screening tool that has been developed to detect cognitive deficits among patients with neurological and psychiatric conditions. The Cognistat examines different major ability areas including level of language, construction, memory, calculations, and reasoning. The evaluation of consciousness, orientation and attention is also included in the Cognistat. To date the Cognistat has not been translated/adapted for use in Arabic speaking countries, therefore the aim of this study was to translate, culturally adapt and test the psychometric properties of Cognistat for use with Arabic-speaking populations with stroke. Methods: The guideline for the cross-cultural adaptation process suggested by Guillemin et al. (1993) was followed. The stages of the Arabic cross-cultural adaptation process included forward translation, translation synthesis, backward translation, expert committee review and pre-testing. Here, we report the data of the pre-testing study in which 22 healthy Arabic speaking adults participated. Results: The mean scores of the Arabic Cognistat were compared to those of the original English Cognistat and were found to be similar to those of the English participants except for the calculation, memory and similarities subtests, although reaching a satisfactory level for their screening purpose. Conclusion: Data collected so far suggests that most adapted items produce similar responses from Arabic-speaking healthy adults as compared to English-speaking participants. The next step is to engage into the validation data collection process with 75 to 100 healthy adults and 30 patients with stroke. It is anticipated that the Arabic Cognistat will be widely used in the Arabic speaking countries, allowing a comparative screening of stroke patients' cognitive deficits in line with usage in the West.

Almubark, B., et al. (2015). "Assessment of cognitive function in arabic speaking population with stroke: A pilot study." Cerebrovascular Diseases 39: 262.

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