COGNITIVE AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILES OF THE ELDERLY

Testing the cognitive functions of the elderly is often eclectic and a theoretical. We take a theoretical model, simultaneous and successive processing, and the tests derived from it to describe the cognitive fu nctions of the elderly. Subsequently, the performance of an elderly sa mple on a battery of neuropsychological tests is examined and also und erstood in relation to the two processing modes. Subjects were 81 indi viduals, 75 years old, from a population of nearly 300 persons partici pating in a Finnish research project on aging. They were administered tests of simultaneous and successive processing as well as an extensiv e battery of neuropsychological tasks. Multivariate and univariate ana lyses of variance, factor analyses, and cluster analyses were used to process the data. Results showed that three groups of individuals can be distinguished in terms of their cognitive and neuropsychological te st performance: (a) those who were good in both simultaneous and succe ssive processing; (b) those who were poor in simultaneous processing, but not poor in successive processing; and finally, (c) those who were poor in successive processing but not poor in simultaneous processing . Discussion focused on multiple patterns of normal aging and the poss ibility of relating the cognitive profiles to everyday life skills. Th e advantage of a theoretical model that allowed for multiple cognitive profiles and had the potential for guiding cognitive remediation was also discussed.