Abstract

The FAS phonemic fluency test is a commonly used neuropsychological test of executive function and processing speed. Although Norwegian discrete norms have been developed for the FAS test, American regression-based norms are frequently used by clinicians in Norway.

However, language and cultural differences impact performance on the FAS test, and using foreign norms may not be appropriate. Moreover, while discrete norming relies on stratified subgroups of demographics, regression-based norming uses the entire sample to estimate the influence of demographics on performance and may thus improve normative estimates. Here we develop regression-based norms for the FAS phonemic fluency test based on n = 204 healthy Norwegian controls between the ages 40−84 from the Norwegian Dementia Disease Initiation cohort (DDI). We compare the proposed regression norms to published Norwegian discrete norms and American regression-based norms in an independent sample of n = 182 cognitively healthy adults reporting subjective cognitive decline (SCD). We found that years of education was the only significant predictor of FAS performance in our normative sample, accounting for 14.9% of the variance. Both the proposed regression-based norms and previously published discrete norms adequately adjusted for demographics in the independent sample. In contrast, the American norms underestimated the effect of education and overestimated the effect of age. While both the proposed Norwegian regression norms and the previously published discrete norms are suitable for use in Norway, the proposed regression norms may be less vulnerable to sub-stratification sample characteristics posed by discrete norming procedures, and thereby improve normative estimation.

摘要

FAS 音位流畅性测试是一种常用的执行功能和处理速度的神经心理学测试。尽管已经为 FAS 测试开发了挪威离散规范，但挪威的临床医生经常使用基于美国回归的规范。

然而，语言和文化差异会影响 FAS 测试的表现，使用外国规范可能并不合适。此外，虽然离散规范依赖于人口统计的分层子组，但基于回归的规范使用整个样本来估计人口统计对绩效的影响，因此可能会改善规范估计。 在这里，我们基于来自挪威痴呆症起始队列 (DDI) 的n = 204 名年龄在 40-84 岁之间的健康挪威对照，为 FAS 音素流畅性测试制定了基于回归的规范。我们在n的独立样本中将提议的回归规范与已发布的挪威离散规范和美国基于回归的规范进行比较 = 182 名认知健康的成年人报告主观认知能力下降 (SCD)。我们发现，在我们的规范样本中，受教育年限是 FAS 表现的唯一重要预测因素，占方差的 14.9%。提议的基于回归的规范和先前发布的离散规范都针对独立样本中的人口统计数据进行了充分调整。相比之下，美国规范低估了教育的影响，高估了年龄的影响。虽然拟议的挪威回归规范和先前发布的离散规范都适合在挪威使用，但拟议的回归规范可能不太容易受到离散规范程序带来的子分层样本特征的影响，从而改进规范估计。