The Frontal Assessment Battery: Normative Performance in a Large Sample of Older Community-Dwelling Hospital Outpatient or General Practitioner Attenders

Background: The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a short battery designed to assess frontal executive functioning, but data for interpretation of performance are limited. Objectives: The Trinity, Ulster, Department of Agriculture (TUDA) study provided the opportunity to derive performance data from a large sample of community-dwelling hospital outpatient or general practitioner (GP) attenders. Methods: Normative analysis based on 2508 TUDA participants meeting these criteria: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) >26/30, not depressed (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression <16) or anxious (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale <8), no history of stroke, or transient ischemic attack. Correlation and regression analyses were used to evaluate the effects of age, education, gender, and general cognition (MMSE). Norms for FAB were created stratified by age and education, using overlapping midpoint ranges of 10 years with a 3-year interval from age 60 to 97. Results: Age and education accounted for 9.6% of variance in FAB score (r(2) = .096) with no significant effect of gender. The FAB and MMSE were modestly correlated (r = .29, P < .01) with MMSE increasing the model's total explained variance in FAB score from 9.6% to 14%. Conclusion: This is the largest study to date to create normative data for the FAB. Age and education had the most significant impact on FAB performance, which was largely independent of global cognition (MMSE). These data may be of benefit in interpreting FAB performance in individuals with similar demographic/health status characteristics in hospital outpatient or GP settings.