Latent structure of cognitive performance in the adult children study.

OBJECTIVE: The Adult Children Study (ACS) at the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center is a longitudinal investigation designed to identify and validate potential biomarkers of preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) in cognitively normal individuals with and without a family history of AD. The purpose of the current study was to validate the proposed latent structure of the ACS psychometric battery.

METHOD: Confirmatory factor analyses of baseline data in a sample of 229 (75 men) cognitively normal middle-aged to older adult individuals assessed a hypothesized 4-factor model of cognitive performance. Measurement invariance was investigated as a function of family history of AD and apolipoprotein E (APOE) status.

RESULTS: This study confirmed a priori hypotheses of 4 latent cognitive domains in a unique longitudinal sample of cognitively normal adults. In addition, there was evidence of a similar factor structure for family history and APOE status groups.

CONCLUSION: These robust indicators of a broad range of cognitive domains will be used in future investigations to track the influence of family history of AD on cognitive performance over time. In addition, associations with fluid, structural, and molecular biomarkers of preclinical AD will be further examined, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally in this sample.