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Episodic Memory and Verbal Fluency Tasks: Normative Data from Nine Nationally Representative Samples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2020

Elvira Lara Open the ORCID record for Elvira Lara [Opens in a new window] ,
Marta Miret ,
Albert Sanchez-Niubo ,
Josep Maria Haro ,
Seppo Koskinen ,
Matilde Leonardi ,
Beata Tobiasz-Adamczyk ,
Somnath Chatterji  and
José Luis Ayuso-Mateos
Elvira Lara*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Princesa (IIS-Princesa), Madrid, Spain Department of Psychiatry, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
Marta Miret
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Princesa (IIS-Princesa), Madrid, Spain Department of Psychiatry, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
Albert Sanchez-Niubo
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain Research, Innovation and Teaching Unit, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain
Josep Maria Haro
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain Research, Innovation and Teaching Unit, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain
Seppo Koskinen
Affiliation:
Population Health Research Unit, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland
Matilde Leonardi
Affiliation:
Neurology, Public health, Disability Unit, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, Milan, Italy
Beata Tobiasz-Adamczyk
Affiliation:
Department of Medical Sociology, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland
Somnath Chatterji
Affiliation:
Department of Information, Evidence and Research, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
José Luis Ayuso-Mateos
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Princesa (IIS-Princesa), Madrid, Spain Department of Psychiatry, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Elvira Lara, Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Princesa (IIS-Princesa), Calle de Diego de León, 62, 28006Madrid, Spain. Tel: +34 91 497 46 01. E-mail: elvira.lara@uam.es
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Abstract

Objective:

This study aims to generate country-specific norms for two episodic memory tasks and a verbal fluency test among middle-aged and older adults using nationally representative data from nine low-, middle-, and high-income countries.

Method:

Data from nine countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America were analyzed (n = 42,116; aged 50 years or older). Episodic memory was assessed with the word list memory (three trials of immediate recall) and word list recall (delayed recall). Verbal fluency was measured through the animal naming task. Multiple linear regression models with country-specific adjustments for gender, age, education, and residential area were carried out.

Results:

Both age and education showed high influence on test performance (i.e. lower cognitive performance with increasing age and decreasing years of education, respectively), while the effect of sex and residential area on cognitive function was neither homogeneous across countries nor across cognitive tasks.

Conclusions:

Our study provided sex-, age-, education-, and residential area-specific regression-based norms that were obtained from one of the largest normative study worldwide on verbal recall and fluency tests to date. Findings derived from this study will be especially useful for clinicians and researchers based at countries where cognitive norms are limited.

Keywords

CognitionAssessmentNorms/Normative studiesNeuropsychologyElderly/AgingPopulation-based study
Type
Regular Research
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 89 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2020

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