Population Health Sciences, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Bonn, Germany.
Institute for Medical Biometry, Informatics and Epidemiology (IMBIE), Faculty of Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2021 Aug;43(6):637-653. doi: 10.1080/13803395.2021.1984398. Epub 2021 Oct 12.
Detecting early pathological cognitive decline is critical for dementia and aging-related research and clinical diagnostics. Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) is commonly used to measure episodic verbal memory. The test requires participants to learn a list of 15 words over several trials. Since multiple testing is often required to detect cognitive decline, but repeating the same test can bias results, we developed 10 German AVLT word lists.
We randomly assigned the lists to 4,000 participants (aged 30-94 years) from a population-based cohort to test their comparability, as well as aging effects and sex differences.
Nine lists were highly comparable, with only one being slightly more difficult. Recall performance decreased on average by 0.6-1.1 words per trial per decade of age. Perseveration errors decreased with increasing age. Women remembered on average between 0.8 and 1.5 words per trial more than men, regardless of age. Women also outperformed men in the sum of Trials 1-5, learning over trials, retroactive inhibition, and false-positive and interference errors. Proactive inhibition remained stable across age and was unaffected by sex.
This German AVLT version presents comparable lists including detailed age and sex references and therefore allows test repetition excluding training effects. These versions are a valuable resource for research and clinical application.
检测早期病理性认知衰退对于痴呆症和与衰老相关的研究和临床诊断至关重要。Rey 的听觉言语学习测试（AVLT）常用于测量情景性言语记忆。该测试要求参与者在几次试验中学习 15 个单词的列表。由于通常需要多次测试来检测认知能力下降，但重复相同的测试会产生偏差，因此我们开发了 10 个德语 AVLT 单词列表。
我们将这些列表随机分配给来自基于人群的队列的 4000 名参与者（年龄在 30-94 岁之间），以测试它们的可比性，以及老化效应和性别差异。
九种列表高度相似，只有一种稍微困难一些。平均而言，回忆表现每十年的每个试验减少 0.6-1.1 个单词。坚持错误随着年龄的增加而减少。无论年龄大小，女性平均每个试验比男性多记住 0.8 到 1.5 个单词。女性在试验 1-5 的总和、学习过程中的记忆、逆行抑制以及假阳性和干扰错误方面的表现也优于男性。前瞻性抑制在整个年龄范围内保持稳定，不受性别影响。
这个德语 AVLT 版本提供了可比的列表，包括详细的年龄和性别参考，因此允许在不考虑训练效果的情况下重复测试。这些版本是研究和临床应用的宝贵资源。
