Problem solving ability in aging and dementia: Normative data on a non-verbal test

Abstract

A non-verbal problem solving task, viz. a simplified version of Shallice's London Towers Test, was given to 131 normal subjects to obtain normative data relating to age, education and sex. The test was built up in its easiest possible feature in order to be administrable also to demented patients, therefore possibly becoming part of the neuropsychological diagnostic procedures of the demential syndromes. Although this version of the test proved to be very easy and therefore likely to yield a statistically treatable wide distribution of scores in demented patients, the age-related decline of performance in normals was apparent. Education and sex showed no significant influence on the test-performance. With correction of the raw scores for age and with knowledge of the distribution of scores in the normal population, this test is now ready to assess the normality of the scores of a new subject according to his age, giving information on this otherwise still uncovered sector of cognitive abilities.

Behavioral and neural correlates of visual emotion discrimination and empathy in mild cognitive impairment

“…After the initial screening, an in depth neuropsychological assessment focused on executive functions, in particular tests of executive speed (Digit Symbol-Coding test of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale [42]), verbal working memory (Listening Span Test, [43]), attentional flexibility (Trail Making Test -Part B [44]; Visual Elevator Task, subtest of the Test of Everyday Attention, Italian Version [45]), planning (Tower of London, [46]), and Verbal Judgments [47] were administered. Sustained and divided attention was investigated by means of the Dual Task [48], the Trail Making Test -Part A [44]) and Attentional Matrices [49].…”

Are Fibromyalgia Patients Cognitively Impaired? Objective and Subjective Neuropsychological Evidence

“…The task has to be done as quickly as possible, following several specific rules and in a given number of moves, a number that increases with the difficulty of the task. The execution time is registered as a dependent variable and then converted and compared with the normative data (24).…”

Development of Executive Function across the Life Span

“…Lowered EF performance in older adults can be seen across a wide range of contexts including performance on EF tasks themselves, such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (Axelrod & Henry, 1992;Daigneault, Braun, & Whitaker, 1992;Libon et al, 1994), problem-solving tasks (Della Sala & Logie, 1998;Shallice & Burgess, 1991), letter fl uency (Whelihan & Lesher, 1985), Tower of London (Allamanno, Della Sala, Laiacona, Pasetti, & Spinnler, 1987), garden-path sentences (Hartman & Hasher, 1991), visual self-ordered retrieval task (Daigneault & Braun, 1993), temporal-order judgments (Allain et al, 2007;Moscovitch & Winocur, 1995), context processing (i.e., the AX-CPT task; Rush, Barch, & Braver, 2006), and directed forgetting (Zacks, Radvansky, & Hasher, 1996). An example of this age-related decline is evident in prospective memory tasks.…”