The ecological validity of clinical tests of visuospatial function in community-dwelling older adults

Little is known about the relation between measures of visuospatial function and daily functioning in community-dwelling older adults. The current study addresses this gap in the literature. Forty individuals with mean (SD) age and education of 78.4 (7.5) and 11.9 (2.6) years, respectively, completed a battery of neuropsychological measures including traditional tests of visuospatial function, a test of visuospatial function with verisimilitude, and performance-based measures of global daily functioning and visuospatial daily functioning. Unlike previous studies, statistical analyses directly evaluated the magnitude of the correlations between cognitive tests and daily functioning. Results indicated that all visuospatial measures significantly correlated with both measures of daily functioning (rs = .34-.59). Although the measure designed with verisimilitude was not significantly better than the traditional visuospatial measures at predicting daily functioning, it did account for significant variance beyond that accounted for by the other tests, supporting its incremental validity.