Mayo's Older Americans Normative Studies: Age- and IQ-Adjusted Norms for the Auditory Verbal Learning Test and the Visual Spatial Learning Test

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although normative data sets for standardized neuropsychometric instruments frequently feature adjustments for subject variables, there are reasons to believe that improvements in interpretive accuracy that result from such adjustments are less than optimal. In particular, years of education may be less closely associated with test performances than is overall intellectual functioning. In this last of four reanalyses of results from the Mayo Clinic's Older Americans Normative Studies (MOANS) databases, age-adjusted scores for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and the Visual Spatial Learning Test were found to be more strongly related to Mayo age-adjusted WAIS-R Full Scale IQ scores (rs = .150 to .395) than to education (rs = .060 to .236) for healthy older examinees between 56 and 99 years of age. Although AVLT-FSIQ correlations were greatest at moderate levels of intelligence, VSLT-FSIQ correlations consistently increased in strength as intelligence increased (cf. Dodrill, 19971999). Based on these results, we present tables of age- and IQ-adjusted percentile equivalents of Mayo age-adjusted AVLT index scores and MOANS age-adjusted AVLT and VSLT scaled scores for ten age ranges and either seven (AVLT) or five (VSLT) IQ ranges.