EFFECT OF EDUCATIONAL-LEVEL, GENDER AND AGE ON THE PERFORMANCE IN A MULTIUSER COMPUTERIZED PSYCHOMETRIC TEST SYSTEM FOR USE IN CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGICAL STUDIES

197 naive, drug-free healthy young volunteers performed psychometric t ests on a single occasion, using a new multi-user computerized test sy stem which consists of tests of simple reaction time, complex reaction time, vigilance, concentration, motor coordination, short-term memory (word pairs or figures) and abstract language-free reasoning (2 versi ons). Normality of distribution of all psychometric variables was chec ked. For the reasoning tests and the memory tests, internal consistenc y and parallel test reliability were determined. Cross-correlations be tween the variables and factor analysis were done to evaluate whether different tests measure different brain functions. Multivariate varian ce analysis was carried out to test the effect of the independent fact ors school education, gender and age on the performance in the psychom etric tests. Subjects with a lower school education level performed wo rse in the reasoning tests, the concentration test and the memory test s. Females were slower in the coordination test and made fewer correct solutions in the concentration test. Older subjects performed worse i n the reasoning tests and had a longer working time in the memory test s than younger ones. The results show the necessity of psycho-metric s creening of volunteers before recruitment for clinical pharmacological psychometric studies in order to reduce inter-individual variability.