[Aspects of cognitive functioning in the aged. A transversal study]

In the context of a WHO study on psychosocial needs of the elderly, a sample of 519 subjects from the region of Louvain was psychometrically tested. This sample consisted of men and woman between 55 and 94 years of age, most of them living at home. The test battery was composed of ten verbal and nonverbal tests and tasks currently used in psychogeriatric clinical practice but lacking validation and normative data for those aged populations. This study (psychometric testing took place in 1979-1980) was intended as a first step in a follow up program to gather more definite information about mental deterioration. Up to now it can be considered however as a cross-sectional study, providing normative data for the assessment of cognitive functioning in aged individuals up to 94 years. The decline in performances, found on all these tests, reflect generation as well as aging effects; the increasing proportions of aged subjects failing on the tests however, seem to indicate a high occurrence of partial or global cognitive deficits in elderly people beyond the eighth decade.