Rey AVLT: Developmental Norms for Children and the Sensitivity of Different Memory Measures to Age*

Nine hundred and forty-three children (487 boys and 456 girls, age range 8 to 17 years, divided into 10 age cohorts) were administered the Hebrew version of the Rey AVLT. Separate norms for boys and girls in each age group are reported. Sensitivity to age for 14 memory measures extracted from the Rey AVLT was analyzed. One of the most consistent findings across the different scores is that memory changes in the 8to 10year-old age range are more dynamic than changes in the 11to 17year-old age range. The results also show a significant and consistent advantage for girls over boys on most of the verbal memory measures. Detailed analyses of sensitivity to age of the different measures extracted from the Rey AVLT provide very useful information for the diagnostician testing auditory-verbal memory in children. The Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) has been found to be affected by age, intelligence, and population type (Query & Berger, 1980; Query & Megran, 1983; Wiens, McMinn, & Crossen, 1988). The fact that a number of memory components are measured, such as immediate and delayed recall, learning rate, and recognition, clearly enhances the test’s sensitivity as a diagnostic tool (Lezak, 1983; Query & Megran; Ryan, Rosenberg, & Mittenberg, 1984; Wiens et al., 1988). Based on factor analysis studies with adult participants, scores extracted from the Rey AVLT reflect different aspects of verbal memory (Ryan et al., 1984). Moses (1989) grouped three of the Rey AVLT scores with Benton’s Visual Retention Test (BVRT, Moses, 1989) scores in an ‘immediate memory’ factor. Smith, Ivnik, et al. (1992), and Smith, Ivnik, Malec, and Tangalos (1993) submitted scores from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R), and two scores from the Rey AVLT to factor analysis. One of the Rey AVLT scores was loaded on the ‘learning’ factor and the other on the ‘retention’ factor. In a more recent study by Vakil and Blachstein (1993), factor analysis produced one, two, or three factors, depending on the combination of scores included in the analysis. The basic factors that were identified were ‘acquisition’ and ‘retention’. The latter could be further subdivided into ‘storage’ and ‘retrieval’, thus yielding a total of three factors. Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder showed improvement on the Rey AVLT after drug therapy (Barrickman, Perry, Allen, & Kuperman, 1995). Several scores from the Rey AVLT differentiated between adolescents with confirmed neuropathologies and control participants (Powell, Cripe, & Dodrill, 1991). The Rey AVLT was found to make a unique contribution to the memory assessment of learning-disabled children (Talley, 1986).