Healthy older adult performance on a modified version of the Cognistat (NCSE): demographic issues and preliminary normative data.

Normative data for a healthy sample of older adults (n = 108) ranging in age from 60 to 96 are provided for the Cognistat, a mental status exam previously known as the Neurobehavioral Cognitive Status Examination (NCSE). A Cognistat Composite Score is also introduced that is intended to be used as a marker of general cognitive impairment, allowing the Cognistat to be used to match patients in terms of the severity of their cognitive dysfunction. The "screen and metric" approach of the Cognistat was abandoned in order to improve the reliability and standardization of this measure by administering the entire metric to all patients.

Demographic characteristics and normative observations for derived-trail making test indices.

Objective: The Trail Making Test (TMT) is a psychomotor task that is used routinely in clinical evaluations and consists of two parts: TMT-A and TMT-B. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations of two derived-TMT indices with age, education, and gender and to establish normative data.

Background: Prior research has suggested that these derived indices provide purer measures of the executive skills required to complete TMT-B.