Measuring longitudinal cognition: Individual tests versus composites.
Alzheimers Dement (Amst)
; 11: 74-84, 2019 Dec.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31673596
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION:
Longitudinal cohort studies of cognitive aging must confront several sources of within-person variability in scores. In this article, we compare several neuropsychological measures in terms of longitudinal error variance and relationships with biomarker-assessed brain amyloidosis (Aß).METHODS:
Analyses used data from the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention. We quantified within-person longitudinal variability and age-related trajectories for several global and domain-specific composites and their constituent scores. For a subset with cerebrospinal fluid or amyloid positron emission tomography measures, we examined how Aß modified cognitive trajectories.RESULTS:
Global and theoretically derived composites exhibited lower intraindividual variability and stronger age × Aß interactions than did empirically derived composites or raw scores from single tests. For example, the theoretical executive function outperformed other executive function scores on both metrics.DISCUSSION:
These results reinforce the need for careful selection of cognitive outcomes in study design, and support the emerging consensus favoring composites over single-test measures.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Observational_studies
Language:
En
Journal:
Alzheimers Dement (Amst)
Year:
2019
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States