Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 50, Issue 3 P171-P178, Copyright © 1995 by The Gerontological Society of America
Age-associated changes in specific errors on the Benton Visual Retention Test
SM Resnick, KM Trotman, C Kawas and AB Zonderman
Laboratory of Personality and Cognition, National Institute on Aging, USA.
While total errors on the Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT) are known to
increase in normal aging, there is little information on changes for
specific error types. We examined the differential increase in seven
specific error categories for 2,000 participants in the Baltimore
Longitudinal Study of Aging. Cross-sectional analyses indicated that all
errors increased with age, but differences between age groups in error
profiles suggested relatively greater age effects for distortions,
omissions, and rotations. There were also significant gender differences in
error profiles, reflecting increased rotation and omission errors in
females. Longitudinal analyses of age changes for a subset of 673
participants with three BVRT assessments were consistent with the
cross-sectional data and indicated intra-individual increases with age in
distortions, omissions, and rotations. While women made more omission
errors, men showed steeper increases in omission errors with age. These
findings suggest that cerebral aging impacts all categories of BVRT errors
but has differential effects on particular error types.
