Cognitive functioning in the elderly with Type II adult onset diabetes mellitus

A performance on a number of cognitive tasks was compared between Type II diabetes mellitus patients (n = 74), and non-diabetic controls (n = 70). This study demonstrated no difference in performance between the two groups on attention and memory tasks of Digit Span forward and back subtest from WAIS-R and Logical Memory subtest from WMS. We did find significant difference in performance of diabetics and controls on the second factor corresponding to general intelligence. Although most of the difference was due to educational levels, there was an independent difference in general intelligence in participants with diabetes. The difference observed on factor two was largely due to Block Design and Digit Symbol Coding subtests both of which could be due to processing speed or visuo-spatial functioning. Vocabulary, Similarities, and BVFDT (another measure of visuo-spatial functioning) showed no difference in performance between the two groups.