Normative Investigations

Normative Investigations are research studies performed with healthy participants to establish normal behavior or average performance in a population. These investigations provide comparisons for patients affected by physical or psychological disorders, so that researchers can identify unusual responses and make accurate diagnoses. For example, researchers who study cognitive performance in dementia need to know how healthy adults of a comparable age perform on the same cognitive tasks, so they have a better sense of how well a dementia patient is functioning.