Fatigue Effects on Intelligence Test Performance in the Elderly

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Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate effects of fatigue on intelligence test performance in the elderly. Dependent variables were verbal comprehension, numerical facility, perceptual speed, and word fluency tests. Fatigue effects were investigated by varying the number of previous tests administered, by introducing breaks between tests in some conditions, and by using a pre-test fatigue-producing condition, a modified form of the finding a's test. Subjects' ages were between 57 to 91-years. It was hypothesized that the finding a's test would be more fatiguing than a long battery of tests and that introducing a break condition between the finding a's test and the main battery would alleviate fatigue effects. Analyses of variance resulted in a main effect due to a pre-test condition for the perceptual speed test only, and only when the main battery was preceded by the finding a's task (p ≤.001). It appears that the elderly are not as susceptible to test fatigue as previous results seemed to suggest.

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