Abstract
Visuospatial deficits have long been recognized as a potential predictor of dementia, with visuospatial ability decline having been found to accelerate in later stages of dementia. We, therefore, believe that the visuospatial performance of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia (Dem) might change with varying visuospatial task difficulties. This study administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) Block Design Test (BDT) to determine whether visuospatial ability can help discriminate between MCI patients from Dem patients and normal controls (NC). Results showed that the BDT could contribute to the discrimination between MCI and Dem. Specifically, simple BDT task scores could best distinguish MCI from Dem patients, while difficult BDT task scores could contribute to discriminating between MCI and NC. Given the potential clinical value of the BDT in the diagnosis of Dem and MCI, normative data stratified by age and education for the Chinese elderly population are presented for use in research and clinical settings.
Highlights
Dementia, one of the most common geriatric diseases, greatly affects the quality of life of older adults, bringing with it a series of related economic and public health issues (Weinberger et al, 1993; Zencir et al, 2005)
Due to the significant potential effects of age and education on Block Design Test (BDT) performance, and the absence of recent normative data for the BDT, we provide age-and educationadjusted normative data using a large sample of healthy Chinese older adults
Compare models 1 and 2, we found that the BDT would make an additional contribution (∆R2 = 0.168, p < 0.001) other than delayed recall (DR) in the discrimination between mild cognitive impairment” (MCI) and Dem groups
Summary
One of the most common geriatric diseases, greatly affects the quality of life of older adults, bringing with it a series of related economic and public health issues (Weinberger et al, 1993; Zencir et al, 2005). Research has shown that patients who developed dementia experienced accelerated rates of cognitive decline before diagnosis, and considerable attention has been paid to the area of memory (Rubin et al, 1998; Grober et al, 2000), as an example of cognitive decline. The rate of visuospatial ability decline has been found to accelerate in the later stages of dementia (Herlitz et al, 1995), and the stages of visuospatial deficits follow the typical order of memory impairments as dementia progresses. With the progression of dementia, episodic memory has been found to show a slow decline; while other cognitive functions, such as visuospatial ability, began to show an accelerated decline. Based on the association between visuospatial ability and dementia progression, we expected that visuospatial ability would be able to be used to differentiate between patients with MCI and Dem
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