Education, Sex, and Age Shape Rey Complex Figure Performance in Cognitively Normal Adults: An Interpretable Machine Learning Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Demographic factors such as education, sex, and age can significantly influence cognitive test performance, yet their impact on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Rey Complex Figure (CF) test has not been fully characterized in large, cognitively normal samples. Understanding these effects is critical for refining normative standards and improving the clinical interpretation of neuropsychological assessments. Methods: Data from 926 cognitively healthy adults (MoCA ≥ 24) were analyzed using supervised machine learning classifiers and complementary statistical models to identify the most predictive MoCA and CF features associated with education, sex, and age, while including race as a covariate. Feature importance analyses were conducted to quantify the relative contributions of accuracy-based and time-based measures after adjusting for demographic confounding. Results: Distinct patterns emerged across demographic groups. Higher educational attainment was associated with longer encoding times and improved recall performance, suggesting more deliberate encoding strategies. Sex differences were most apparent in the recall of visuospatial details and language-related subtests, with women showing relative advantages in fine detail reproduction and verbal fluency. Age-related differences were primarily reflected in slower task completion and reduced spatial memory accuracy. Conclusions: Leveraging one of the largest reported samples of cognitively healthy adults, this study demonstrates that education, sex, and age systematically influence MoCA and CF performance. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating demographic factors into normative frameworks to enhance diagnostic precision and the interpretability of cognitive assessments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".