ARCS Benefits
The ARCS has a number of benefits, including:
- Scientifically validated to provide early identification of cognitive impairment
- Simple and highly standardised administration by the clinician (e.g. specialist, general practitioner, assistant or nurse), requiring minimal patient supervision
- Simple for the patient to complete, including elderly people with low computer skills, patients with mild dementia or patients who stutter
- Alternate form for repeat testing to minimise learning effects
- Minimal 'hardware' requirement, e.g. MP3 audio player with a headset
- Highly sensitive, probing five cognitive domains: Executive function/attention, fluency, language, visuospatial and memory (including immediate recall, delayed recall and recognition)
- ARCS Calculator (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet) quickly and reliably produces demographically adjusted (i.e. scaled) ARCS scores from raw ARCS scores
- ARCS Calculator generates database of demographic, test, raw and scaled score data that can be imported for later analysis or retrieval
- Soft and hard copy records of scaled scores available
- A single scaled overall ARCS score easy to generate in the field without computer
- Robust and portable at low cost
