Fund of Information is More Strongly Associated with Neuropsychological Functioning Than Education in Older Spanish Adults

Abstract

Educational influence on cognitive performance has been extensively agreed in Neuropsychology. Nonetheless, recent studies highlighted the need of better measurements to assess benefit from the schooling experience in order to further understand schooling influence on cognition. The WAIS-III Information subtest is proposed here to measure this influence at old age. Ninety-five older adults were divided according to their educational attainment and their Information subtest score, and completed extensive neuropsychological assessment. Performance on the Information subtest had a significant effect on all same cognitive functions as educational attainment, but also on additional domains. Moreover, cognitive performance on several tasks can be classified in three levels as a function of Information score. The WAIS-III Information subtest could be of special interest as a measurement of the benefit from educational experience not only to study cognition in Spanish older populations but also heterogeneous samples in terms of educational experiences and environments.

Keywords: Assessment; Cross-cultural/minority; Elderly/geriatrics/aging; Norms/normative studies.