Conference on Advanced Psychometric Methods in Cognitive Aging Research

描述(由申请人提供)：老年人口的快速增长激发了人们对老年人正常和病理性认知功能的强烈科学兴趣。随着年龄的增长，阿尔茨海默病等衰弱疾病的患病率越来越高，这就需要临床和研究方法来衡量这些疾病的影响，而认知测试在检测、诊断和监测疾病状态和进展方面发挥着重要作用。日益增加的人口多样性给准确测量认知能力带来了特殊的挑战。大多数用于临床和研究的认知测试都是从20世纪上半叶开始使用心理测量学方法开发的。测量理论和方法已经取得了长足的进步，特别是项目反应理论(IRT)和相关的潜在变量建模方法，这些方法可能对认知测量、研究设计和认知变量的分析产生重要影响。这一系列会议旨在促进现代心理测量方法在认知老化研究中的应用。具体目标是：1)让认知老化方面的发展中和成熟的研究人员接触到现代心理测量和统计建模技术，2)让心理测量理论和统计学方面的专家了解认知老化研究的实际和理论问题，以及3)鼓励在这些会议期间基于研究人员、心理测量学家和统计学家的合作制作手稿。在这笔赠款的最初供资周期中，我们成功地举办了五次年度会议。这一经历帮助我们制定了下一代会议的计划。会议的形式将包括认知衰老和应用心理测量理论专家的说教报告，心理测量和统计分析方法的演示，以及最重要的，使用真实数据的实践经验。这种内容和形式不仅适合鼓励经验丰富的研究人员的教育和合作，而且对于研究生、博士后研究员和初级教师来说也是一个非常有效的学习环境。拟议的五年更新期的会议主题包括：老化身体中的大脑老化、干预研究、与衰老疾病相关的最早认知衰退、测量密集的纵向研究设计，以及认知衰老的遗传学。与往年一样，将非常重视围绕真实数据的科学分析组织的工作组，我们计划在传统的学术渠道(例如，向同行评审的科学期刊提交手稿)和年度科学会议的专题讨论会上传播这些讲习班产生的信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The rapid increase in the older segment of the population has stimulated intense scientific interest in normal and pathological cognitive functioning in older adults. The increasing prevalence with advancing age of debilitating diseases like Alzheimer's disease has led to a need for clinical and research methods for measurement of effects of these diseases, and cognitive tests play a major role in detecting, diagnosing and monitoring disease status and progression. Increasing demographic diversity creates special challenges for accurate measurement of cognition. Most cognitive tests that are in clinical and research use were developed using psychometric methods from the first half of the 20th century. There have been substantial advances in measurement theory and methodology, notably item response theory (IRT) and associated latent variable modeling methods, that could have an important impact on the measurement of cognition, study design, and analysis of cognitive variables. This conference series is designed to promote the application of modern psychometric methods in research on cognitive aging. Specific goals are: 1) to expose developing and established researchers in cognitive aging to modern psychometric and statistical modeling techniques, 2) to expose experts in psychometric theory and statistics to the practical and theoretical concerns of cognitive aging research, and 3) encourage production of manuscripts based on the collaborations of researchers, psychometricians, and statisticians during these conferences. We have conducted five successful annual conferences in the initial funding cycle of this grant. This experience has helped to shape our plans for the next generation of conferences. The format of the conferences will include didactic presentations by experts in cognitive aging and applied psychometric theory, demonstrations of psychometric and statistical analytic methods, and most importantly, hands-on experience using real data. This content and format is not only appropriate for encouraging education and collaboration of seasoned researchers but has also been an extremely effective learning environment for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. Conference themes for the proposed five-year renewal period include aging brains in aging bodies, intervention studies, earliest cognitive decline associated with diseases of aging, measurement intensive longitudinal research designs, and genetics of cognitive aging. As in previous years, there will be a heavy emphasis on workgroups organized around scientific analyses of real data, and we plan to disseminate the information resulting from these workshops in both traditional academic outlets (e.g. submission of manuscripts for peer reviewed scientific journals) and through symposia at annual scientific conferences.