Mayo's Older Americans Normative Studies: Age- and IQ-Adjusted Norms for the Trail-Making Test, the Stroop Test, and MAE Controlled Oral Word Association Test

Abstract

Although normative data sets for standardized neuropsychometric instruments often include adjustments for subject variables, there are reasons to believe that improvements in interpretive accuracy that result from such adjustments are less than optimal. In particular, years of formal education may be less closely related to test performances than is general intellectual functioning. In this second of four reanalyses of results from the Mayo Clinic's Older Americans Normative Studies (MOANS) databases, age-adjusted scores for the Trail-Making Test, the Stroop Color-Word Test, and the MAE Controlled Oral Word Associations Test were found to be more strongly associated with Mayo age-adjusted WAIS-R Full Scale IQ scores (rs = .368 to .495) than with education (rs = .174 to .367) for healthy older examinees between 56 and 99 years of age. For the TMT and the COWAT, but not the Stroop, these associations became stronger as IQ increased (cf. Dodrill, 1997 Dodrill , C. B. ( 1997 ). Myths of neuropsychology . The Clinical Neuropsychologist , 11 , 1 – 17 . [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] , 1999). Tables of age- and IQ-adjusted percentile equivalents of MOANS age-adjusted TMT, Stroop, and COWAT scores are presented for eleven age ranges and seven IQ ranges.