Hooper Visual Organization Test (VOT) as a Predictor of Driving Status of Individuals with Dementia

Hooper Visual Organization Test (VOT) (Hooper, 1983) items were correlated with driving status of geriatric individuals with dementia to help screen for high-risk drivers. A retrospective review of 87 medical chart on patients, 60-91 years, who underwent a neurocognitive evaluation at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, Texas, with a complete VOT, driving status, dementia diagnosis, and demographic descriptors (age, gender, marital status) were selected for analysis. Of the 55.2% participants who reported a current driving status, VOT scores ranged: 20.8% normal, 43.8% mildly impaired, 31.3% moderately impaired, and 4.2% severely impaired. An item analysis was followed by direct logistic regression analysis which correctly predicted 85% of the drivers and 74% of the nondrivers with an overall success rate of 80.5% (p=.001). The Wald criterion selected 4 VOT items as reliably predicting driving status: items 6 (hammer), 19 (teapot/pitcher), 22 (mouse), and 25 (block). Models run with gender and/or marital status was not reliably different. These 4 items may add to a brief screening test to identify drivers with dementia potentially at risk. In addition, the large number of current drivers scoring in the impaired range suggests that individuals, their families and others are not intervening with driving behavior, possibly placing the individuals and public at risk.