title: General Knowledge of the World: a standardised assessment.
abstract: An entirely verbal enquiry of "General Knowledge of the World" made up by 168 questions exploring 14 domains of knowledge (12 questions each) has been standardised on 175 (97 women and 78 men) healthy Italian subjects with at least 8 years of formal education. Norms for each set of questions are provided. An unexpected finding is that age did not play an influential role on performance, whereas education did: the higher it was, the better the score. Women proved to fare significantly worse than men. A feasibility check on 30 Alzheimer patients with very mild overall cognitive impairment showed that the general knowledge enquiry was relatively easy to administer. The discrimination power between normal controls and Alzheimer patients for each subtest has been calculated.
authors.affiliation: Neurology Clinic I, University of Milan, Polo Didattico di Vialba, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mariani
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sacco
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Spinnler
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Venneri
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003469:Culture; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000592:standards*; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D008875:Middle Aged; D011581:Psychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D012016:Reference Values; D012044:Regression Analysis; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012737:Sex Factors