Executive functions assessment in neuropsychological practice: From Modified Card Sorting Test to Modified Card Sorting Test - Roma version. Normative values

The Modified Card Sorting Test (MCST) is a neuropsychological tool used to assess frontal lobe and executive functions. The purpose of the actual study was to obtain norms and corrections scores for a further version of the MCST. The change we introduced in the administration rules (the subjects were left free to choice the order of the association criteria along all the test and not only for the first three times) could make more linear the test itself and clearer the strategy the subjects are following. We have submitted to the new version 361 healthy normal subjects, uniformly distributed in 6 age decades (from 20 to 80); the representation of the educational levels is less regular, due to the rare occurrence of a low educational level in normal people under the age of fifty. The results are in favour of a prevalent effect of age on all three scores we considered (number of completed categories, number of perseverative responses, number of non-perseverative errors) while the educational level has an influence only on the number of non-perseverative errors. The sex has no significant influence on the performances in the actual version of the MCST. The correction scores can shift the performance from the range of pathology to the range of normality and vice versa only in specific cases, like older people and people with the lower educational levels.