Mayo's Older African Americans Normative Studies: WMS-R Norms for African American Elders

ABSTRACT

Norms for African American elders on the Wechsler Memory Scale—Revised (WMS-R) were derived from a sample of 309 community-dwelling individuals participating in Mayo's Older African Americans Normative Studies (MOAANS). Normative estimates are provided for traditional WMS-R subtest scores and for supplemental procedures to evaluate forgetting rates and recognition memory. Tables are provided to convert raw WMS-R subtest and supplemental scores to age-corrected scaled scores. These may be further adjusted for years of education, if desired, by applying regression-based corrections. We anticipate that these data will enhance the diagnostic utility and clinical interpretation of WMS-R performance in older African Americans.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was supported by Mayo's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (NIA P50 AG16574). The authors sincerely thank the study participants, the staff of the Mary Singleton Senior Citizens Center, Bethel Baptist Church, and the many churches within the African American community of Jacksonville, Florida, for their strong support of our research efforts. We also gratefully acknowledge the staffs of Mayo's ADRC and Clinical Neuropsychology Service for their assistance in test administration, scoring, and data management. We are especially grateful to LaShaune Lawson, Shelia O'Rourke, and Sylvia Stewart, who served as study coordinators for the MOAANS project.

Notes

Printed with permission of Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. All rights reserved.

Age-and-education corrected MOAANS scaled scores (MSS_A&E) are calculated using the following formula:

MSS_A&E = K + (W₁ * MSS_A) − (W₂ * EDUC)

where K = A constant for each test, W₁ = A regression-derived weight applied to the age-corrected scaled score derived from Tables 2-8 (MSS_A), and W₂ = A regression-derived weight applied to education (EDUC).