[Cued and uncued memory tests: norms in elderly adults from the 3 Cities epidemiological study]

The free and cued reminding test is often considered to be essential in the neuropsychological examination of elderly people consulting Memory Clinics. One of the reasons is that this test maximizes learning by inducing deep semantic processing and by controlling encoding and retrieval conditions. The aim of this study was to produce age, sex and educational level-adjusted normative data for this test.

These data were collected as part of the Three-City (3C) Study, a French population-based study on aging.

The subsample of subjects analysed for this study included 1 458 non-institutionalised and non-demented elderly adults aged 65 and over. Norms were calculated according to age (65-70, 70-74, 74-78, 78-90), sex and educational level of the subjects (primary level versus and secondary or university level).

The interest of this work is to provide to clinicians normative scores on the free and cued reminding test which can be used as an aid to interpret a patient's performance on a test widely used to detect episodic memory deficits in aging.