Age-related changes in the capacity for cognitive flexibility should be considered in social planning for the expanding elderly population and in the functional assessment of the individual geriatric patient. Current means for assessing conceptual flexibility are not particularly appropriate for use with the elderly. In the current study, a briefer and more tolerable measure of conceptual flexibility was derived from the Visual Verbal Test (VVT). This index correlated significantly with the number of perseverative errors but not the number of nonperseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), attesting to its validity as a specific measure of the ability to shift mental set. A significant relationship between age and both this VVT measure of conceptual shift and the number of perseverative errors on the WCST was observed in a sample of 60 healthy elderly volunteers between the ages of 55 and 84, suggesting that cognitive flexibility is indeed negatively associated with age.
