P3a and Neuropsychological ‘Frontal’ Tests in Aging

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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the auditory P3a and neuropsychological tests related to frontal or prefrontal function in aging. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) P3a correlates more strongly with neuropsychological tests of frontal/prefrontal function than P3b does. (2) P3a correlates more strongly with neuropsychological tests of frontal/prefrontal function than with tests of general mental abilities. Twenty-seven adults (22-92 years, mean age 58 years) completed four neuropsychological tests assumed related to frontal or prefrontal function (Stroop, TMT, CTT, COWAT), two tests of general fluid cognitive ability (matrices and block design subtests from WASI; Wechsler, 1999), and one ERP task. The data gave support to the assumption that P3a measures frontal cognitive functioning of the same sort that is indexed by different Stroop measures. For most other tests of prefrontal function, the correlations with P3a and P3b are not very different, and so P3a can only to a modest extent be said to index these neuropsychological functions better than the traditional P3b.