A compendium of neuropsychological tests: administration, norms, and commentary

In the Dutch research program “Life-Course Dynamics” three projects in progress are presented which study the self-organization of behavior over the course of life at different levels of theorizing on the basis of a longitudinal data set, generated by means of the Lifeline Interview Method (LIM). The first project describes different aspects of the dynamic structure and content of individual lives. It was found among other things that the structure of life is dominated by the Principle of the Constant Life Perspective, i.e., the sum of past and future autobiographical events, is constant over the lifespan, while their relation changes systematically with age. Content analysis and compression of the LIM data set of life events resulted in the composition of six modal “self-portraits” with regard to both past and future of young, middle-aged, and older men and women, respectively. The second project, based on the principles of gerodynamics and branching theory, studies how people manage their lives, and how...

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Life-course dynamics: A research program in progress from the Netherlands.

We administered four prospective memory tasks to 330 adults between 18 and 89 years of age to investigate the relationship among the measures of performance in the four tasks, as well as the relationship of the prospective memory measures to age, other cognitive abilities, and noncognitive factors. The four prospective memory variables were found to exhibit both convergent and discriminant validity, indicating that prospective memory ability appears to represent a distinct dimension of individual differences. The prospective memory construct was significantly related to other cognitive abilities, such as executive functioning, fluid intelligence, episodic memory, and perceptual speed, but it was only weakly related to self-ratings of (primarily retrospective) memory and to personality traits. Although a substantial proportion of the age-related variance on the prospective memory construct was shared with other cognitive abilities, we also found some evidence of unique, statistically independent, age-related influences on prospective memory.

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Construct validity and age sensitivity of prospective memory.

As the field of prospective memory (ProM) research has expanded, recognition of the need to make a clinical diagnosis of ProM difficulties has also increased. In addition, there is increasing interest in understanding in more detail the ways in which ProM deficits differ in populations with different underlying neurological dysfunctions. While questionnaires, naturalistic studies and laboratory studies have all been invaluable in furthering our understanding of ProM, until recently there has not been a standardised clinical measure. The Memory for Intentions Screening Test (MIST) was designed to be a relatively brief clinical measure of ProM in clinical populations. The MIST allows for comparisons of performance with event-based and time-based cues. The MIST also has some items with a short (2-minute) and some with a long (15-minute) delay period. Finally, the MIST contains items that require a verbal response as well as items that require an action response. The MIST has now been used in studies of normal ageing as well as a range of clinical populations, including individuals with traumatic brain injury, individuals with HIV infection and individuals with schizophrenia. The psychometric properties of the MIST have been found to be acceptable. Data from each of the clinical populations that have been administered the MIST demonstrate good specificity and sensitivity of the measure as well as the ability to begin to make comparisons about different patterns of performance between disease types.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1443964600001741

Memory for Intentions Screening Test: Psychometric Properties and Clinical Evidence

Prospective memory (ProM) refers to our ability to become aware of a previously formed plan at the right time and place. After two decades of research on prospective memory and aging, narrative reviews and summaries have arrived at widely different conclusions. One view is that prospective memory shows large age declines, larger than age declines on retrospective memory (RetM). Another view is that prospective memory is an exception to age declines and remains invariant across the adult lifespan. The present meta-analysis of over twenty years of research settles this controversy. It shows that prospective memory declines with aging and that the magnitude of age decline varies by prospective memory subdomain (vigilance, prospective memory proper, habitual prospective memory) as well as test setting (laboratory, natural). Moreover, this meta-analysis demonstrates that previous claims of no age declines in prospective memory are artifacts of methodological and conceptual issues afflicting prior research including widespread ceiling effects, low statistical power, age confounds, and failure to distinguish between various subdomains of prospective memory (e.g., vigilance and prospective memory proper).

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JoAnn Miller

Papers

Pro- and Retrospective Memory in Late Adulthood