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Assessment of Cognitive Change in Older Adults

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Submitted By bgleeson
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Dementia is a set of disorders that include impaired thought and behaviour that disrupts a person’s everyday activities. It usually presents as a syndrome of chronic or progressive nature, with changes in memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement. Dementia is the most significant neurological disorder experienced by persons aged over 65 years. As expected, there is ‘cognitive loss’ with increased age. The cognitive assessment of older adults should entail expectations of decline due to age, mental health and other possible causes of deteorioration.

The implication of cognitive change presents an issue with early-onset dementia and cognitive testing. This poses some difficulty for psychologists conducting cognitive assessments, due to the absence of a baseline measure of their previous abilities for comparison. Even if the assessment was conducted with the view of early intervention, practice effects are likely to be apparent. Any expected variation is likely due to psychological change or familiarity but deciphering between the two may pose a problem.

Despite increased public awareness of the impact of dementia on people's lives, it is not always easy to establish an early diagnosis of dementia. Early identification and correct diagnosis of dementia is important for several reasons, including; Correct diagnosis is essential to rule out other conditions, such as delirium and depression, which may have similar features to dementia (Alzheimer's Australia, 2005).

Salthouse, T & Saklofske, D. (2010). Do the WAIS-IV tests measure the same aspects of cognitive functioning in adults under and over 65? In Weis, L., Saklofske, D., Coalson, D., & Raiford, S (Eds.) WAIS-IV Clinical Use and Interpretation (pp. 217-234). Oxford: Elsevier.
Clinicians need to be aware and understand the effects that age might

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