Normative visuospatial performance in Australian midlife women

Abstract

This paper presents normative data for visual – spatial ability in midlife Australian women. Understanding normative performance on visuospatial tasks has gained increasing importance recently with the emergence of the association between Alzheimer's disease and impairments in visuo-constructional skills and judgments of spatial relations. Thus, the availability of relevant local normative data is critical as a valid reference source in the clinical assessment of cognitive function and the diagnosis of cognitive degenerative diseases. In the present study, 257 healthy Australian-born women aged 56 – 67 years who participated in the Melbourne Women's Midlife Longitudinal Health Project were assessed for visual – spatial ability using the Block Design (BD) task of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III and the Judgment of Line Orientation (JLO) task. The Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale was also administered to assess mood. Results revealed a significant main effect of age and level of education on BD and JLO task performance. Performance on both visuospatial tasks declined significantly with age. Women with 12 or more years of education performed significantly better on the BD and JLO tasks as compared with women with less than 12 years of education. Scaled scores for each of these tasks were also computed.

Acknowledgments

Research was funded in part by a grant from the Alzheimer's Association (USA: IIRG-01-2684). The authors wish to acknowledge and thank Ms Gael Trytell for her contributions to this project.