Preliminary Normative Neuropsychological Data for an Elderly Chinese Population

Neuropsychological testing is key to diagnosing and assessing for dementia but there is a dearth of normative neuropsychological data for ethnic Chinese older persons, particularly for non-English-speaking individuals with low education. The aim of this study was to establish a set of age-specific, education-specific, and culture-appropriate norms on measures of cognitive function for a population of cognitively normal community-dwelling Chinese elderly, and explore the effects of age and education on test performance. Results showed decreasing test performances with increasing age and very poor performance in the most poorly educated strata. However, the age-associated decline in test performance was not uniform across different education groups, indicating a more complex association. The present findings highlight a need for normative data that are applicable to lower educated elderly people as this group makes up a substantial proportion of the Asian elderly.