Normative scores for attentional tests used by the Spanish consortium for ageing normative data (SCAND) study: Trail Making Test, Digit Symbol and Letter Cancellation

Abstract

Objective: This paper reports normative data for different attentional tests obtained from a sample of middle-aged and older native Spanish adults and considering effects of age, educational level and sex. Method: 2,597 cognitively intact participants, aged from 50 to 98 years old, participated voluntarily in the SCAND consortium studies. The statistical procedure included conversion of percentile ranges into scaled scores. The effects of age, education and sex were taken into account. Linear regressions were used to calculate adjusted scaled scores. Results: Scaled scores and percentiles corresponding to the TMT, Digit Symbol and Letter Cancellation Task are shown. Additional tables show the values to be added to or subtracted from the scaled scores, for age and education in the case of the TMT and Letter Cancellation Task measures, and for education in the case of the Digit Symbol subtest. Conclusions: The current norms provide clinically useful data for evaluating Spanish people aged 50 to 98 years old and contribute to improving detection of initial symptoms of cognitive impairment.

Keywords:

• Normative data
• Trail Making Test
• Digit Symbol
• cancellation task
• ageing
• SCAND
• descriptive survey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for involvement of the Complutense University of Madrid and the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience (Center for Biomedical Technology UPM-UCM) Aging Projects, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PSI2009-14415-C03-01, PSI2012-38375-C03-01, PSI2015-68793-C3-1-R and RTI2018-098762-B-C31), the Vallecas Project financed by Reina Sofía Foundation, and PILEP + 90 funded by Fundación General de la Universidad de Salamanca (FGUSAL)-CENIE within the Interreg V-A Program, Spain–Portugal, (POCTEP), 2014-2020, and the Compostela Aging Study of the University of Santiago de Compostela, funded by Ministry of Science and Innovation (PSI2010-22224-C03-01) and by Galician Government (ED431C 2021/04; GI-1807-USC: Ref. 2021-PG011). We are also grateful for the involvement of the ELES project.