A microcomputerized task assessment of cognitive change in normal elderly and young adults

There is need for efficient, acceptable quantitative measures of cognitive differences with senescence which, in addition, have potential to discriminate mild dementia from the performance of normal elderly. A microcomputerized method designed to assess attentional capacity was administered to two elderly age groups, 68-79 and 80-87 years of age. A comparison group of young adults, 25-35 and 35-45 years of age, was similarly studied. The two tasks in the procedure (the tracking task, consisting of following a randomly moving target on a video screen, and the probe task, consisting of visual monitoring of a randomly elongating dot in the video screen) are performed separately and then simultaneously (dual task). The tracking task discriminated between the younger groups. Both the tracking and the probe task discriminated between the two older age groups. On discriminant analysis, the best variables for distinguishing older age groups were the logarithms of the single task scores. The performance scores of both elderly age groups were lower on the dual tasks compared with single tasks, but with significant performance decreases only in the probe scores. Comparing all four age groups, the older groups performed less well on the tasks and particularly poorly on the dual tasks. There were no significant gender effects. These initial data will be useful in application of the method for purposes of discriminating mild dementia from normal senescence, and possibly the effects of drugs used to enhance cognitive function.