Development of ageing across the lifespan using common neuropsychological indices on an automated test battery.

Clark CR Paul RH, Williams LM, Arns M, Fallahpour K, Handmer C & Gordon E (2006). Development of ageing across the lifespan using common neuropsychological indices on an automated test battery, Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 21, 449-467.



This study established standardized age, gender and years of education norms for subjects spanning nine decades for a newly developed battery of neuropsychological tests, IntegNeuro. The battery is standardized and fully automated, using a computerized touchscreen. The twelve neuropsychological tests of the battery were administered to 1007 male and female volunteers across the age range 6 to 82. Sensitive indicators of change during development and ageing were widely obtained on comprehensive measures of attention and working memory, learning and memory retrieval, and language, visuospatial function, sensori-motor and executive function. Improvement tended to occur through to the third and fourth decade of life, followed by gradual decrement and/or relatively stabilized performance thereafter. These results strongly underscore the need for most neuropsychological tests to norm according to age. Gender differences were obtained on measures of sustained attention, verbal learning and memory, visuospatial processing and motor function. Years of education in the adult cohort was reflected in better performance on a range of verbal measures. The IntegNeuro test battery presented as a sensitive indicator of normative function and provides a reference for assessing the presence of abnormal cognition, for evaluation of treatment effects and for longitudinal case management. .