Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery--Portuguese version: age and education effects.

Purpose: To verify age and education effects on communication performance of healthy adults in the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery, Portuguese version (MAC-PT).
Methods: The sample comprised 90 healthy adults from Portugal, European Portuguese speakers, divided into nine groups according to educational level (4-9, 10-13, and > 13 years of formal schooling) and age (19-40, 41-64, and 65-80 years). The influence of age and education was assessed by comparing mean scores between groups, using a two-way analysis of variance followed by Bonferroni post hoc tests (p ≤ 0.05).
Results: The results showed that participants' performance was influenced by age in pragmatic-inferential, discursive, and prosodic tasks. Education had the greatest influence on the performance in all processes evaluated by the MAC-PT.
Conclusion: Age and education seem to influence the communicative performance and should be considered in the assessment of neurological patients.