Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status: Italian Normative Data for Older Adults

The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), widely used for detecting cognitive impairment in different neuropsychiatric conditions, is increasingly applied for measuring cognitive functioning in older individuals. Available normative data for RBANS Italian version suffer from under-representation of the older ages (>60 years) and are not corrected for education. Moreover, normative data are provided only for Indexes and Total scores. We thus administered RBANS Italian version in a larger sample of older adults, taking into account the effect of age, education and gender on all scores.

We used a regression-based model to assess the effect of age, education, and gender on RBANS Subtests, Indexes and Total scores in a consecutive series of healthy cognitively normal volunteers aged 60-79 years (N = 158). The obtained norms were compared with the Italian original normative data by means of Wilcoxon rank-sum test.

Multiple linear regression analyses showed that age and educational level significantly influence performances on most RBANS scores. A free-to-use Excel to calculate subject's percentiles for any single score was developed. When compared with original normative values, our percentiles distribution of Indexes and Total scores did not reveal significant differences (p > .05).

The obtained normative data show good concordance with previous norms. The instrument seems not significantly affected by educational level. The possibility to correct for any single score could make RBANS a more precise measure for capturing subtle cognitive deficits in prevention studies.