| Summary: | 碩士 === 長庚大學 === 職能治療學系 === 101 === Impairments in verbal episodic memory have substantial impact on one’s daily life. Different patterns of the verbal episodic memory deficits may be associated with different pathological conditions in neuropsychiatric patients. Most conventional memory measures only entail recall and recognition performance, which may not be sensitive enough to reveal these pathological conditions in clinical practice. This limitation can be overcome by incorporating measures of learning strategies and memory characteristics. The aims of this study were to validate a Chinese adaptation of the California Verbal Learning Test-II, and examine the effects of age, sex, education, and general abilities on word-list learning performance.
Four-hundred-and-sixty-eight volunteers (aged between 16-75 years) participated this cross-sectional study. The psychometric analyses showed that the test had good split-half reliabilities (whole sample = .95, male = .95, female = .94), and stable test-retest reliabilities of the recall performance. The correlations between performance on the word-list learning and visual memory were higher than those between the word-listing and executive functions, suggesting the Chinese adaptation of the test has satisfactory convergent and discriminant validities.
The regression analyses revealed that estimated fluid intelligence (based on age, years of education, and word-reading ability) and sex accounted for approximately 30-50% variances of the major indices for the word-list learning performance. After controlling for education, fluid intelligence, and reading ability, word recall performance continued to decline with advancing ages. The performance of the female was significantly better than that of the male. Compared to the male, the age-associated decline of the word-recall performance was less evident in the female participants. Nevertheless, the results of this study also revealed that the measures for learning and memory characteristics defined by the California Verbal Learning Test-II were not significantly affected by age, years of education, or general abilities.
The present study highlights the importance of the moderating effects of the age, sex, education and general abilities when assessing participants’ verbal memory functions.
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