President Trump passed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment

Shortly after the President passed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a reader emailed with two questions:

1. Does this mean that the President has the cognitive capacity required of a national leader?
2. How does a score on this test relate to the complexity level scores you have been describing in recent posts?

Question 1

A high score on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment dos not mean that the President has the cognitive capacity required of a national leader. This test result simply means there is a high probability that the President is not suffering from mild cognitive impairment. (The test has been shown to detect existing cognitive impairment 88% of the time [1].) In order to determine if the President has the mental capacity to understand the complex issues he faces as a National Leader, we need to know how complexly he thinks about those issues.

Question 2

The answer to the second question is that there is little relation between scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the complexity level of a person’s thinking. A test like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment does not require the kind of thinking a President needs to understand highly complex issues like climate change or the economy. Teenagers can easily pass this test.

Related articles

• National leaders’ thinking: How does it measure up?
• National leaders’ thinking: U.S. Presidents
• If a U.S. President thought like a teenager…
• President Trump on climate change
• President Trump on immigration
• President Trump on intelligence

Benchmarks for complexity scores

• Thinking complexity required to pass the Montreal Cognitive Assessment — early level 10 (1000–1025).
• Most high school graduates perform somewhere in the middle of level 10.
• The average complexity score of American adults is in the upper end of level 10, somewhere in the range of 1050–1080.
• The average complexity score for senior leaders in large corporations or government institutions is in the upper end of level 11, in the range of 1150–1180.
• The average complexity score (reported in our National Leaders Study) for the three U. S. presidents that preceded President Trump was 1137.
• The average complexity score (reported in our National Leaders Study) for President Trump was 1053.
• The difference between 1053 and 1137 generally represents a decade or more of sustained learning. (If you’re a new reader and don’t yet know what a complexity level is, check out the National Leaders Series introductory article.)

[1] JAMA Intern Med. 2015 Sep;175(9):1450–8. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.2152. Cognitive Tests to Detect Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Tsoi KK, Chan JY, Hirai HW, Wong SY2, Kwok TC.