The effect of age-related macular degeneration on cognitive test performance

The reliable assessment of cognitive functioning is critical to the study of brain-behaviour relationships. Yet conditions that are synchronous which ageing, including visual decline, are easily overlooked when interpreting cognitive test scores. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the negative consequences of visual impairments on cognitive tests performance. Moderate to severe levels of age-related macular degeneration were simulated, with a set of goggles, in a sample of twenty-four normally sighted participants while they completed two cognitive tasks: a vision-dependent reaction time task and a vision-independent verbal fluency test. Performance on the reaction time task significantly decreased ( p