Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)
What It Measures
The MoCA is a ten-minute cognitive screen built to catch mild cognitive impairment — the stage where something has changed but a person still manages daily life. That was the gap it filled: the MMSE, the previous standard, misses most people at this stage.
Thirty points span eight domains: visuospatial and executive function, naming, memory, attention, language, abstraction, delayed recall, and orientation. Tasks include copying a cube, drawing a clock, naming animals, repeating digit sequences, generating words beginning with a letter, and recalling five words after a delay. A score of 26 or above is generally considered normal, with one point added for people with 12 or fewer years of education.
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: Training and certification are mandatory and cost $125, a one-time requirement. After certification the paper test remains free for clinicians, academic researchers, and teachers, with no per-administration fee. Certification is free for students, faculty, and academic researchers.
Learn More: The certification requirement has since been narrowed. Current guidance from the developers makes training optional for professionals using the MoCA solely for screening, triage, or referral based on the total score alone, and required for those interpreting individual tasks, sub-scores, or domain-specific impairments. Retraining after two years is recommended but not mandatory, at half the original cost. Non-certified users can access paper tests after completing a disclaimer, but their non-certified status prints on the test.
