Normative data on Benton Visual Form Discrimination Test for older adults and impaired scores in Clinical Dementia Rating 0.5 participants: community-based study. The Osaki-Tajiri Project.
OBJECTIVE
The Benton Visual Form Discrimination test (VFD) is one of the non-verbal tests to assess the capacity for complex visual form discrimination. The purposes of the present study were to investigate the effects of age and education level of the VFD in healthy elderly subjects, rigorously excluding participants with Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) 0.5, and the characteristics of VFD patterns in CDR 0.5 participants.


METHODS
The 597 participants included CDR 0 (healthy elderly, n = 405), CDR 0.5 (mild cognitive impairment, n = 161), and CDR 1 and 2 (dementia, n = 31). The VFD, Digit Forwards, Digit Backwards and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT) copying were used for neuropsychological assessment.


RESULTS
There were significant effects of age and education level on the VFD in healthy participants, and the CDR 0.5 group had a lower score on the VFD than the healthy group. Low performance on the VFD was associated with Digit Backward and RCFT copying in both healthy and CDR 0.5 participants.


CONCLUSIONS
CDR 0.5 participants exhibit deficits of visual form discrimination related to attention, visual construction and organization.
Kasai
Mari
M
Department of Geriatric Behavioral Neurology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
Ishizaki
Junichi
J
Ishii
Hiroshi
H
Yamaguchi
Satoshi
S
Yamadori
Atsushi
A
Meguro
Kenichi
K
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004493:Education; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values