OBJECTIVE: Aim of the study is to form the norms of the neuropsychological battery for the Turkish pilots. We formed the battery in order to measure all attention components, working memory, information processing rate, cognitive flexibility, reaction time, category changing, inhibiting inappropriate response tendency, various parameters of short/long term visual memory and spatial perception. The battery includes Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (Wais-R) Digit Span, Rey Complex Figure Test, Continues Performance Scale, Pasat Test, Reaction Time Test, D2 Attention Test, Stroop Test, Trail Making Test, Visual Elevator Test and Line Orientation Test.
METHOD: The study included 144 men and 3 women healthy airline pilots. Participants were selected randomly according to their age groups. 131 participants completed all of the tests in the battery. In statistical analysis of the data, cross tabulations and chi-square (χ2) analyzes were performed to determine possible combinations of variables. The distributions of subjects in terms of a certain variable (eg, military-civilian) were analyzed by the chi-square test; the difference between neuropsychological test scores for each variable (eg civilian-militarian) were analyzed by the Kruskal Wallis test. For parametric comparisons, t test was applied for binary variables while Anova test was applied for variables with more than two independent variable levels.
RESULTS: There was a significant relationship between age and undergraduate education. The older participants were military school graduates while the younger ones are civilian school graduates. Significant differences were found between age groups and test scores.
CONCLUSION: When all test results are examined, performance of the ages 50-59 years group decrease significantly. Comparing some of the test scores of pilots with the norm values of the community, the differences are remarkable. This suggests that neuropsychological evaluations of pilots should be done according to professional norms.
Key words: neuropsychological test, pilots, norm, attention, memory
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