Normative data for two neuropsychological tests sensitive to frontal dysfunction.

Abstract

Interest in frontal functions has progressively increased over recent years; however, despite this, there are only a few "frontal" tasks for which Italian normative data are available. The objective of this study was to obtain reference values for two frontal tests from a random sample of normal adults: the first (the Test of Classification and Recall of Pictures) has been shown to reveal selective impairment in patients with unilateral frontal excision; the second (the Odd-Man-Out Test) derives from tasks which have been used to evaluate frontal functions in animals and detect frontal impairment in Parkinson patients. We tested 100 normal subjects, aged 22 to 79 years, stratified by education according to the Italian school system. The correction grids for both tests are also presented. The usefulness of these tests is represented not only by their sensitivity to frontal impairment, but also by the possibility of dissociating the various cognitive aspects of frontal lobe dysfunction.