Influence of age, gender and educational level on performance in the Brief Cognitive Battery-Edu

The Brief Cognitive Battery-Edu (BCB-Edu) contains nine tests, seven of which are related to the memory of drawings, and has good accuracy in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment. Objectives To evaluate the influence of age, gender and educational level on the performance in tests related to memory of drawings of the BCB-Edu in healthy subjects. Methods Participants were adult volunteers; exclusion criteria were illiteracy, neurologic or psychiatric disorders, visual or hearing impairment, untreated chronic clinical conditions, alcoholism, use of drugs, and for those aged 65 or over, an informant report of cognitive or functional impairment. We evaluated 325 individuals (207 women), with a mean age of 47.1 (±16.8) years, ranging from 19 to 81, and a mean of 9.8 (±5.0) schooling-years. Univariate analyses, correlations and logistic regression were employed (α=0.05). Results There were significant negative correlations between age and the scores in four of the seven tests. However, schooling-years were positively correlated to the scores, where schooling-years decreased with age in this sample (rho= -0.323; p<0.001). Logistic regression confirmed that gender influenced the learning of drawings, where women performed better, while age influenced incidental memory, immediate memory, learning and delayed recall of the drawings, and schooling-years influenced visual identification, immediate memory, learning, delayed recall and recognition of the drawings. Conclusion Gender, age and education influence the performance on the memory of drawings of the BCB-Edu, although the extent of these influences differs according to the nature of the test.