COGNITIVE TEST-PERFORMANCE AMONG NONDEMENTED ELDERLY AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND WHITES

We examined the neuropsychological test performance of a randomly sele cted community sample of English-speaking non-Hispanic African America n and white elders in northern Manhattan. AU participants were diagnos ed as nondemented by a neurologist, whose assessment was made independ ent of neuropsychological test scores. African American elders obtaine d significantly lower scores on measures of verbal and nonverbal learn ing and memory, abstract reasoning, language, and visuospatial skill t han whites. After using a stratified random sampling technique to matc h groups on years of education, many of the discrepancies became nonsi gnificant; however, significant ethnic group differences on measures o f figure memory, verbal abstraction, category fluency, and visuospatia l skill remained. Discrepancies in test performance of education-match ed African Americans and whites could not be accounted for by occupati onal attainment or history of medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. These findings emphasize the importance of using cultura lly appropriate norms when evaluating ethnically diverse elderly for d ementia.