School of Medicine Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2026
Abstract
Objective: The Mexican Cognitive Aging Ancillary Study administers a comprehensive cognitive assessment based on the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol. To ensure accurate measurement of cognition for older adults in Mexico, we sought to determine the cognitive factor model of the Mexican Cognitive Aging Ancillary Study battery at Wave 1. Method: Participants were 2,042 adults over the age of 55 living in Mexico in 2016, selected from the Mexican Health and Aging Study survey of 2015. We used confirmatory factor analysis to assess and refine a theoretically driven multiple domain hierarchical factor structure. Correlation estimates between cognitive scores and age and education were evaluated. Results: The hierarchical general cognition and five-domain models (orientation, memory, language, executive functioning, and visuospatial) were identified as reasonable models for summarizing performance in this sample. Cognitive domains were negatively associated with age (rs = −.31 to −.49) and positively associated with education (rs = .43–.74). Conclusions: The Mexican Cognitive Aging Ancillary Study battery demonstrated a reliable cognitive factor structure that assesses the domains of orientation, memory, language, executive functioning, and visuospatial functioning. A hierarchical general cognition factor score was also created. The derived scores can be used to accurately demonstrate cognitive performance among Mexican older adults. Future work will focus on measurement invariance across demographic groups and evaluating the factor structure of Wave 2.
Recommended Citation
Kamalyan, L., Kunicki, Z. J., Jeon, S., Yang, G., Mejia-Arango, S., Obregon, A. M., Wong, R., Saenz, J., Briceño, E. M., & Arce Rentería, M. (2026). Factor structure of the neuropsychological battery in the Mexican Cognitive Aging Ancillary Study (Mex-Cog). Neuropsychology. Advance online publication.https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0001119
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Neuropsychology
DOI
10.1037/neu0001119
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Neuroscience
Comments
© 2026 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format for noncommercial use provided the original authors and source are credited and a link to the license is included in attribution. No derivative works are permitted under this license.