Allen Cognitive Level Screen
What It Measures
The Allen Cognitive Level Screen (ACLS) is a quick, hands-on screen of functional cognition — how well a person can take in instructions, solve problems, and carry out an unfamiliar activity. The therapist demonstrates three leather-lacing stitches of increasing difficulty: the running stitch, the whipstitch, and the single cordovan stitch. The person then tries to copy each one.
What the therapist watches is not needlework but how the person uses verbal and demonstrated cues, notices errors, and adjusts. Scores run from 3.0 to 5.8 on the Allen Cognitive Scale. It is a screen, not a diagnosis, and it is meant to sit inside a fuller evaluation; vision or fine motor problems can lower a score for reasons unrelated to cognition.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: ACLS-5 are sold as physical kits with the manual through authorized distributors.
