This investigation examined the performance of 61 healthy 60- to 85-year-olds on the Shipley Institute of Living Scale (SILS). This highly functioning group (as indicated by performance on WAIS Block Design and Digit Span subtests) obtained a mean Conceptual Quotient (CQ) that fell within the range commonly considered indicative of cognitive impairment, with only 5% who performed within the "normal" range. Analysis of the frequency distribution for the number of Abstraction items correct shows a clustering at the low end of the scale. This suggests potential problems of reliability of the Abstraction and CQ measures with this population and appears to limit potential discriminative power of CQ to measure organic changes in cognitive functioning. Provision of age-based norms is thus unlikely to make the SILS an efficient screening device for organic cognitive changes in the elderly.