The Wechsler Memory Scale is widely used by clinical psychologists in Australia in the assessment of memory functions in patients with suspected organic cerebral impairment. However, the Scale has never been normed on an Australian population, separate sub-test norms are available for only a limited age range, and individual psychologists have made their own adaptations of certain American idioms.Preliminary findings using Form I of the Scale with a sample of 500 subjects suffering from no known memory impairment raise doubts concerning the applicability of Wechsler's normative data to Australian subjects, both in respect of difficulty level and of the alleged absence of sex differences. Multivariate analysis of the data is reported and normative scales for each sub-test as well as total score.

The National Adult Reading Test (NART), the Schonell Graded Word Reading Test (SGWRT), and the Wechsler Memory Scale, Form I (WMS) were administered to 65 healthy subjects aged 65 to 89 years. Regression equations were derived which allowed total raw score on the WMS to be predicted from the subject's age and from the number of errors on the NART alone or on the NART and SGWRT combined. The distribution of discrepancies between obtained and predicted WMS scores for each equation did not depart significantly from normality and the percentage of subjects at each discrepancy score is provided. The standard error of prediction for each equation is slightly less than that for predicting WAIS IQ from the NART. Sixteen patients with clinical diagnoses of senile dementia of the Alzheimer type obtained discrepancies as large or larger than the most discrepant 2% of normal subjects. These results suggest that this procedure may provide a brief but effective assessment of cognitive deterioration in the elderly and may be capable of assessing dementia earlier than the NART/WAIS combination.

Wilson, Bacon, Kaszniak, and Fox (1982) suggest that the learning of low associate pairs on the Wechsler Memory Scale involves episodic memory alone while the learning of high associate pairs involves semantic memory as well. Tulving (1983) also comments that, whereas some information in episodic memory is relatively unorganized and access to its content tends to be deliberate and requiring conscious effort (e.g., low associate pairs), information in semantic memory is organized and access to its content is more automatic (e.g., high associate pairs). As there may be occasions when it would be useful to compare these two types of memory functioning, differential diagnosis between depressive pseudodementia and organic dementia for example, normative data is provided enabling the calculation of the frequency with which differences between the learning of the two kinds of associate occur, based on the performance of 500 subjects with no known neuropsychiatric involvement.

The effectiveness of 'classroom' reality orientation (CRO) for confused elderly subjects was evaluated. Experimental groups 1 and 2 (each consisting of five subjects) received CRO for 1 month with only group 1 continuing with maintenance CRO for a further 2 months. Both experimental groups and the control group (10 subjects) received modified informal reality orientation (IRO) and environmental manipulation (EM) for all 3 months. All subjects were assessed prior to the start of the study and after 4 and 12 weeks of treatment on cognitive and behavioural measures. Both experimental groups showed significant improvement on both cognitive and behavioural measures after 1 month compared with the controls. This improvement was maintained at 12 weeks for both experimental groups but there was a statistically significant difference only between group 1 and its matched controls.

The effectiveness, for confused elderly subjects, of modified informal reality orientation and environmental manipulation without any 'classroom' reality orientation was investigated with 10 experimental subjects in one ward and 10 control subjects in another. All subjects were assessed prior to the start of the intervention and after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment on cognitive and behavioural measures. While the control group showed decline on all measures except one, the experimental group improved in ward orientation and cognitive status and showed no decline on the behavioural measures.