Faculty Bibliography

In the course of the preparatory work for the WHO cross-cultural study on the neuropsychiatric aspects of HIV-I infection, two new neuropsychological tests (the WHO/UCLA Auditory Verbal Learning Test and the Color Trails 1 & 2) were developed. The evaluation of these tests was performed at four sites, two in developed and two in developing countries. The data obtained suggest that the tests are more culture fair than others currently used to assess the same functional domains, that they are sensitive to HIV-1-associated cognitive impairment, and that this sensitivity "holds" across different cultures.

This study explored effect of age on encoding, retention, and retrieval components of memory functioning in a sample of 156 healthy, elderly subjects between the ages of 57 and 85, partitioned into four age groups. Memory assessment was based on subjects' performance on the RAVLT, which consisted of five free-recall trials, recall after interference, and recognition trial. Significant group differences in recall were found on all five learning trials, whereas rates of learning, forgetting, and recognition did not differ for four age groups. In addition, primacy/recency effect was equally strong for all groups. Results suggest faulty retrieval mechanisms, whereas encoding and retention processes did not prove to be affected by aging.