Cognitive screening of federal public leaders: MoCA performance, cognitive risk, and predictors of variability in a highly educated workforce

Introduction : Cognitive screening is essential for assessing mental health and identifying early cognitive vulnerability. This preliminary phase of a preregistered umbrella project (OSF: https://osf.io/8jz6k) implemented a structured cognitive-assessment interview with federal public managers, representing an unprecedented initiative in Brazil. Objective: To characterize the cognitive status of federal public leaders using a multimodal screening protocol and to examine the contributions of intellectual functioning and age to global cognitive performance. Methods : Seventy-eight leaders ( M _age = 48.44, SD = 8.04) completed a standardized remote cognitive screening session including the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Brazilian version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and a dyadic short form of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to estimate intellectual functioning. Brazilian normative data were applied for classification. Associations among age, intellectual functioning, and cognitive performance were examined using bivariate correlations, hierarchical regression, and bootstrap procedures with 5,000 replicates. Results : Mini-Mental State Examination scores were uniformly high (28.12 ± 1.74), reflecting ceiling effects typical of well-educated adults. Although most participants performed within the healthy range on the global Montreal Cognitive Assessment score (25.56 ± 2.70), the Memory Index Score identified a larger-than-expected proportion of individuals within normative ranges associated with mild or more pronounced cognitive vulnerability, indicating heightened sensitivity to subtle episodic-memory changes. Intellectual functioning was a strong positive predictor of cognitive performance, whereas age emerged as a significant negative predictor only after controlling for intellectual functioning, consistent with cognitive-reserve models. Bootstrap confidence intervals supported the robustness of both predictors. Conclusion : The findings indicate preserved global cognition alongside meaningful heterogeneity in episodic-memory performance, underscoring the value of memory-sensitive indices for early cognitive monitoring in high-responsibility leadership contexts. Subsequent executive-function assessments from the umbrella project will further refine the identification of domain-specific cognitive profiles.