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Show Christy Cope Psychology A COMPARISON OF THE BEHAVIORAL DYSCONTROL SCALE AND THE BEHAVIORAL DYSCONTROL SCALE -ELECTRONIC VERSION IN A GERIATRIC POPULATION Christy Cope (Yana Suchy, Ph.D.) Department of Psychology, University of Utah In geriatric populations, deficits in executive functioning represent a leading cause of decline in functional independence, yet instru-ments used for assessment have traditionally been plagued by poor sensitivity and specificity. One test sensitive to moderate and severe executive functioning deficits is the Behavioral Dys- control Scale (BDS). The BDS Electronic Version (BDS-EV) is based on tasks from the original BDS, and has been created to better assess moderate and mild deficits through more exact measures of errors and response times. The present study provided initial validation of the BDS-EV in a geriatric population by administer-ing the BDS-EV, BDS, and a battery of Neuropsychological tests to three different age groups: college (18-28) (n=ll), 40-50 (n=ll), and 60-70 (n=12). For the BDS-EV tasks, significant differences in error rates were found between adults in all three age groups, the college group having the least errors and the 60-70 group having the most errors. This finding was consistent with the original BDS testing done by Grigsby, Kaye, and Robbins (1992), in which adults 60 and older performed more poorly on the BDS than college stu-dents with a mean age of 30. |
