Standardisation of the Rey Complex Figure Test in New Zealand Children and Adolescents

It is essential when using neuropsychological measures to have appropriate and valid norms for evaluating an individual's performance. Most neuropsychological measures used in New Zealand have been standardised on American and British populations and may not be sensitive to the varying cultural experiences of New Zealanders. Normative data, obtained from a sample of 840 children aged between 7-18 years, are presented for the Copy and Recall Phases of the Rey Complex Figure Test. The standardisation data obtained reveals a steady improvement in performance with increasing age for both the Copy and Recall Phases of the RCFT. No gender differences were found for any of the age-groups and there were no overall ethnic differences for the Copy or Recall phases. A number of significant differences were found across the age groups, between the American standardisation data and that obtained from this study, for both the Copy and Recall Phases of the RCFT. ********** The Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT) is a neuropsychological instrument that is used widely throughout New Zealand with both children and adults. The RCFT is composed of two parts--the first requires the participant to copy a complex geometric figure while the second asks him/her to recall and draw what they remember of the figure, without forewarning, after an interval. The RCFT copy phase is a measure of visuospatial constructional ability while the recall phase of the task evaluates the individual's ability with encoding complex visual information into longer-term storage and then recalling this information at a later time. Visuospatial constructional ability is complex, comprising multiple distinct, but interrelated subcomponents; the ability to combine elements into a meaningful wholes, the ability to discriminate between objects, distinguish between left and right, the ability to understand relationships among objects in space, the ability to adopt various perspectives and to represent and rotate objects mentally; the ability to comprehend and interpret symbolic representations of external space and the ability to work out the solution for non-verbal problems (Cronin-Galomb & Braun, 1997). Having a reliable and valid measure of this ability is important because people with visuospatial deficits can have problems in everyday life which include carrying out mathematical calculations, route finding and map reading, drawing and copying diagrams, assembling objects from parts and fixing up broken objects and items around home. As well as assessing visuospatial constructional skills and mnemonic functions, the RCFT provides information about a child's organisation, planning and problem solving skills (Karapetsas & Kantas, 1991) by evaluating the manner in which the child reproduces the figure. Various administration procedures and scoring systems have been developed for the RCFT. Before the development of the Meyer and Meyer's (1995) scoring criteria, the most commonly used scoring procedure for these tests was that developed by Osterreith (1944) and modified by Taylor (1959). This scoring system involved breaking the figure into 18 individual elements which are scored for both distortion and placement. While these criteria are explicit about the specific elements which are to be scored, there was considerable latitude in determining what constitutes a scorable distortion or displacement. Meyer and Meyer (1995) have developed more specific and detailed criteria for scoring the RCFT and have gathered comprehensive normative data. The Rey Complex Figure test has been found to be sensitive to laterality of cerebral lesion especially when the right hemisphere is affected (Loring, Lee, Martin and Meador, 1988). It is thought that, due to the complexity of the figure and the task demands, the RCFT provides more clinical information and is differentially sensitive to specific kinds of brain damage such as right temporal lobe dysfunction (Loring, Lee, Martin & Meador, 1988). …