Development of a Scale (Gies) for Assessment of Cognitive and Perceptual Functioning in Geriatric Patients

A bstract This study was concerned with the development of a brief, structured, testing procedure for evaluating the cognitive and perceptual functioning of geriatric patients. When male patients were compared with female patients, the males performed significantly better than the females. Older geriatric patients did more poorly on the test than did younger patients. For both males and females, the major decrease in cognitive functioning occurred between the decades of the 60's and the 70's. The test significantly discriminated between patients who showed relatively good social and physical functioning and those who showed relatively poor functioning when these areas were independently assessed. Analyses showed that most of the items significantly discriminated between a high‐scoring group and a low‐scoring group. Split‐half reliability of the test was +.93. The test appears to be a promising technique for assessing geriatric patients before and after various forms of therapy.