Donald Trump wants you to know he is a very smart man. So smart, he repeatedly insists, that he “aced” a cognitive test. There’s just one thing: the test isn’t intended to be difficult.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which NBC reported in 2018 is the screening the president took as part of an annual physical, is back in the news now after the Trump repeatedly argued with Fox News anchor Chris Matthews about the exam during a Sunday interview. While the president insisted that the final five questions “get very hard,” according exam instructions the MoCA is “designed as a rapid screening instrument for mild cognitive dysfunction.”
In other words, the exam isn’t an IQ test or anything even remotely close to it. Rather, it’s meant to assist trained health professionals in evaluating forms of cognitive decline such as Alzheimer’s. Doing well on the test doesn’t mean you’re smart, but rather suggests that at least as far as the test can tell that you aren’t experiencing some form of cognitive dysfunction.
“The total possible score is 30 points,” the administration instructions available for download online explain, “a score of 26 or above is considered normal.”
There are numerous versions of the test available on the MoCA website, but the English-language version (8.3) asks the test taker to accomplish tasks like: “Copy this drawing as accurately as you can,” “Tell me the name of this animal, and “Draw a clock. Put in all the numbers and set the time to 5 past 10.”
Aced.
Image: screenshot / moca
In his interview with Wallace, after being confronted about the nature of the test, Trump insisted that the last five questions were where the real challenge lay.
So let’s look at the last section of the exam, which is focused on “orientation.” The administrative instructions that is, the instructions for the health care professional administering the exam read as follows:
The examiner gives the following instructions: “Tell me today’s date.” If the subject does not give a complete answer, the examiner prompts accordingly by saying: “Tell me the [year, month, exact date, and day of the week].” Then the examiner says: “Now, tell me the name of this place, and which city it is in.”
Scoring: One point is allocated for each item correctly answered. The date and place (name of hospital, clinic, office) must be exact. No points are allocated if the subject makes an error of one day for the day and date.
While answering that question may indeed be difficult for some, one would hope that it is not “very hard” for the president to state what day of the week it is.
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The “abstraction” section, which is toward the end of the exam, is likewise not what you might consider to be “very hard.” In it, the administrator asks the test taker to determine to what category an orange and a banana both belong. The correct answer is “fruits.”
So sure, Trump may have indeed “aced” the MoCA exam. Unfortunately for him, and all of us, that doesn’t mean what he seems to think it does.read more
The cognitive test that Trump keeps bragging about acing isn’t meant to be hard
