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Normative test data for a 38-year-old and for a 74-year-old were obtained for the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, and the Wechsler Memory Scale. These test protocols were presented for blind interpretation to a random sample of psychologists specializing in neuropsychology. Test results for the "average" elderly person were interpreted as normal less frequently (42%) than results for the "average" younger adult (93%). The elderly person's test results also received higher impairment ratings and were frequently interpreted as reflecting dementia (23%). Subject's level of confidence with decisions made did not have an impact on accuracy rates. In addition, personal, training, and professional variables were not significantly related to judgment accuracy. The results suggest a tendency for misinterpretation of normal elderly persons' test performance.Neuropsychological assessment is commonly used to differentiate the effects of normal aging from those of cerebral pathology. This objective is ideally accomplished by comparing an elderly patient's test results with norms developed from the data from both normal and pathologically impaired elderly subjects. A difficulty that can arise in evaluating the elderly, however, is that test results of an older person may be compared with norms obtained from a sample of younger adults (Albert, 1981;Heaton, Grant, & Matthews, 1991). The use of such norms can result in incorrect interpretations of test findings and lead to inappropriate recommendations for an elderly patient. For example, several studies have shown that a large percentage of normal elderly subjects are misclassified as brain damaged when standard adult norms are used (

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