How Will The Doctor Assess My Memory?

May 4, 2009 -- Question: How will the doctor assess my memory?

Answer: Well, memory can be assessed in many ways. It can be assessed with paper and pencil tests, with surveys, with material such as blocks or visual spatial materials, or on a computer. The most common way is with a paper and pencil test.

The type of things that you'd be asked to do would be to remember a list of words or a short story, and then to recall it immediately usually, and then after some delay. What happens is your performance on these tests is then compared to the performance of a normative group -- that's a group of normal people about your same age, and with your same background.

And then, when those results can be compared and determined to be either normal for your age or perhaps impaired.