The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of age and schooling on Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB) performance in elderly residents in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sample was composed of 470 elderly individuals, all of whom were evaluated using the BCSB. The results were analyzed by groups that were divided by age and schooling. Analyses of variances (ANOVAs) were performed to examine differences in performance between the age and schooling groups and interactions between age and schooling. Correlations between cognitive variables, age, and schooling were also analyzed. The sample consisted of 420 women (89.4%) and 50 men (10.6%). The mean age was 72.77 Ϯ 7.06 years, with average schooling of 9.54 Ϯ 5.32 years. The ANOVA showed that elderly individuals who were older than 80 years of age presented worse performance on memory tasks compared with the younger age groups. With regard to schooling, elderly individuals with low schooling presented worse performance on the Verbal Fluency and Clock Drawing tests and on the Mini Mental State Examination. The two-way ANOVA revealed a significant Age ϫ Schooling interaction for Mini Mental State Examination scores. The Age ϫ Schooling interaction impacted performance of the elderly in the evaluation of global cognitive function. The present results indicated a dissociation, in which age affected memory function, and schooling affected other cognitive functions.

ObjectiveTo describe the performance on basic cognitive tasks, instrumental activities of daily living, and depressive symptoms of a community-based sample of elderly adults in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) who participated in multiple physical, social, and cognitive activities at government-run community centers.MethodsA total of 264 educated older adults (> 60 years of age of both genders) were evaluated by the Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB), Lawton's and Pfeffer's activities of daily living indexes, and the Geriatric Depressive Scale (GDS).ResultsThe mean age of the sample was 75.7 years. The participants had a mean of 9.3 years of formal education. With the exception of the Clock Drawing Test (CDT), mean scores on the cognitive tests were consistent with the values in the literature. Only 6.4% of the sample had some kind of dependence for activities of daily living. The results of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) indicated mild symptoms of depression in 16.8% of the sampleConclusionThis study provided important demographic, cognitive, and functional characteristics of a specific community-based sample of elderly adults in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.