Department of Psychological Medicine, National University Health System, Singapore.
Clin Neuropsychol. 2012;26(2):321-34. doi: 10.1080/13854046.2011.652180. Epub 2012 Jan 30.
Neuropsychological testing is key to diagnosing and assessing for dementia but there is a dearth of normative neuropsychological data for ethnic Chinese older persons, particularly for non-English-speaking individuals with low education. The aim of this study was to establish a set of age-specific, education-specific, and culture-appropriate norms on measures of cognitive function for a population of cognitively normal community-dwelling Chinese elderly, and explore the effects of age and education on test performance. Results showed decreasing test performances with increasing age and very poor performance in the most poorly educated strata. However, the age-associated decline in test performance was not uniform across different education groups, indicating a more complex association. The present findings highlight a need for normative data that are applicable to lower educated elderly people as this group makes up a substantial proportion of the Asian elderly.
神经心理学测试是诊断和评估痴呆症的关键，但针对华裔老年人，尤其是那些教育程度低、非英语母语的人群，神经心理学的标准数据十分匮乏。本研究旨在为认知正常的社区居住的华裔老年人建立一套特定年龄、特定教育和特定文化的认知功能测试的标准，并探讨年龄和教育对测试表现的影响。结果表明，随着年龄的增长，测试表现逐渐下降，而在教育程度最低的人群中表现极差。然而，不同教育群体的测试表现与年龄相关的下降并不一致，这表明存在更复杂的关联。本研究结果强调需要有适用于受教育程度较低的老年人的标准数据，因为这一群体在亚洲老年人中占有相当大的比例。
