Differences between czech and american seniors in the Repeatable battery for the assessment of neuropsychological status
Abstract
Increasing prevalence of dementia syndromes highlights the need of efficient diagnostics of cognitive deficits. One of the useful tools for this purpose is the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS).
However, we need adequate normative data in order to evaluate the scores correctly. The aim of this work was to compare the results of Czech seniors to the original normative sample in different subtests and index scores of RBANS. 114 examinations of healthy volunteers with the experimental Czech version of RBANS were evaluated.
Age of subjects ranged between 60 and 90 years, education between 5 and 20 years. We compared raw scores of 12 subtests and standard scores of 5 indices, and the Total score.
The reference group was the age-matched part of the original normative sample (N=270). We also evaluated the influence of age, education and gender on the scores.
Our subjects scored significantly higher in the Immediate Memory Index. Other indices and raw scores did not differ.
We found significant, although weak, correlations of scores with the demographic characteristics. Our results indicate that the use of RBANS in clinical psychological practice will require obtaining local normative data.