Abstract
The aim of the study was to evaluate effect sizes of short cognitive tests between healthy young adults and seniors. We assessed 42 healthy volunteers with mean age 25,5-5,8 years (50 % women) and 42 healthy volunteers with mean age 69,2-6,9 years (50 % women).
The test battery was composed of tests for processing speed (time to name 12 months), attention and working memory (switching between months and days of week), semantic fluency (time to name 12 animals, 12 first names), memory and motor-sequence learning. We used Cohen's d to measure the effect size and a non-parametric variant GCLESS (generalization of common language effect size statistics).
We detected significantly worse performance in all parameters except false recall in seniors than in young adults. The highest effect sizes were detected for memory d = -1,52 (A = 0,85), switching between months and days of week d = 1,07 (A = 0,80), semantic first name fluency d = 1,05 (A = 0,81) and motor sequencing d = 0,84 (A = 0,77).
Many easy tests that take less then 1 minute are sensitive to detect physiological cognitive decline during aging.