When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them (Trump and the MOCA)
Trump replied, "Eric's still in school?"
Sometime in the last three years, Trump took a cognitive screening test which he aced. Some people say because it was a cognitive functioning screening test and not an IQ test, it wasn't challenging. I agree. I think if they really wanted to test his intelligence, they should have given him a photo array of several women and ask him to identify his second daughter.
Trump would reply, "I have a daughter besides Ivanka?"
I'm here all week, folks. I have to admit there have been some funny bits about him taking the MOCA and doubling down on why it means he is a stable genius.
He is not. The MOntreal Cognitive Assessment is a screening tool for people living with dementia or who have experienced a brain injury. It is not an intelligence test. I have administered it many times. It is important to note that people who administer the test are not provided an answer key. Essentially, that means that anyone providing the test should score 100% regardless. It is important to know that the brain is an organ in the human body. As we age, we naturally experience atrophy in our organs. This includes the brain. That is why, as you age, you are not expected to achieve a perfect score.
If you receive a diagnosis of dementia, you are likely given the MOCA or another cognitive screening test. That is to provide a baseline of where you are. If your diagnosis is early enough in your disease, you may be prescribed medication designed to plateau your losses. You will be given a follow-up MOCA in a year's time to make sure the medication is still appropriate for you and it is given to track the rate that dementia is proceeding through your body.
It is also important to know that cognition is more than just memory. Cognition also involves your insight, your judgement, your creativity, and your ability to have appropriate emotions. These different functions of cognition are controlled within different places in your brain. If you have a brain injury, the MOCA is administered to understand the injury better and to determine where should be the focus of therapy.
One of the questions is to repeat five objects that are read to you. Then, a few questions later, you are asked to repeat those five objects again. Obviously, it is a small insight into the ability of transferring short-term memory into long-term memory.
In the now famous, Chris Wallace interview, Trump attempted to show how "smart" he was and he named:
"Man. Person. Woman. Camera. TV"
It is in this example that Trump is truly telling us who he really is.
The question is to repeat five objects. Obviously, Trump was just identifying the first five things he saw. For those of us who remember their Grade 6 English class, you would know that a noun is a person, place, or thing. A thing is an object.
He is correct that a camera is an object and a TV is an object.
A man, a person, or a woman are not objects. When you identify a man, a person, or a woman as an object, you are essentially dehumanizing him.
This is not the first example we have of Trump showing that the only people he seems to care about are people who share his last name or are married to someone who shares his last name or is married to someone who shares his last name.
Trump is really telling us who he is. I believe him.
Comments
Post a Comment