LONG-TERM STABILITY AND INTERCORRELATIONS OF COGNITIVE-ABILITIES IN OLDER PERSONS

This project studied the intercorrelations and long-term stabilities o f standard Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), Wechsle r Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R), and Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (AVL T) summary indexes. It also reports similar data on the recently publi shed Mayo Cognitive Factor Scales (MCFS), which are derivative indexes for the combined administrations of these 3 tests. These analyses cha llenge 2 assumptions that most psychologists make when interpreting ad ult cognitive tests: (a) that for cognitively normal people, performan ce in one cognitive domain correlates well with and predicts functioni ng in other cognitive domains, and (b) that in the absence of patholog y, cognition is stable.