Performance-based assessments of cognition are less susceptible to demographic effects than traditional memory tests:...

Demographic corrections (e.g., sex, education, race, ethnicity) are often applied when assessing cognition in adults; however, these corrections have significant limitations (e.g., using years of education does not capture the quality of, or access to, education). It is therefore critical to develop novel assessment options that are less susceptible to demographic factors. This study compared demographic effects on a verbal memory test and a performance-based test of cognition and daily functioning in older adults. Based on prior work, we hypothesized the performance-based tests would be less susceptible to demographic factors than paired associates learning.

Data from 1326 participants (mean±SD age=61.9±10.9 yrs; Female = 1066, 80%) were collected through the MindCrowd electronic cohort, with 79 (6%) non-White, 109 (8.2%) identifying as Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, and 327 (25%) reporting education as less than a college degree. Paired associates learning is a well-established measure of medial temporal lobe-dependent learning and memory through recall of word-pairs, scored as the number of correct word pairs entered out of 36 possible. The performance-based test involved functional upper-extremity movement, specifically transporting beans to target cups in a repeating sequence (a task also shown to be dependent on the medial temporal lobe), scored as the intraindividual variability (standard deviation) in trial time across four consecutive trials.

As hypothesized, linear regression analysis showed that PAL was significantly affected by sex, education, race (particularly Black/African American), and ethnicity, whereas the performance-based test was affected only by sex and with a much smaller effect size than that of PAL.

Performance-based assessments may be an equitable approach to evaluating cognition without requiring score corrections, particularly for diverse populations.