The effect of examiner's race on the performance of African American children on the SCAN

Purpose: With African American children, processing-dependent central audit ory nervous system (CANS) tests, such as the Screening Test of Auditory Pro cessing Disorders (SCAN) (Keith, 1986), may be less culturally biased than traditional knowledge-dependent standardized language measures. Keith found that African American children received lower scores on the SCAN than did Anglo American children. The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether middle-class African American children might improve their SCAN pe rformance when tested by an African American versus and Anglo American exam iner. Method: The SCAN was administered twice to 47 African American children, ag es 5-10 years. Half of the participants were tested by an African American examiner first and then by an Anglo American examiner, with the order of te sting counterbalanced for the remaining half of the participants. Data were also analyzed by grade level. Results: A 2 (examiner race) x 3 (grade level) analysis of variance did not reveal a significant effect for examiner race, but did show a main effect for grade level on certain SCAN subtests; however, effect size results reve aled that the magnitude of differences between mean scores on the Competing Words subtest and the composite score were large enough to be potentially significant. Results also indicated a significant learning effect. Clinical Implications: Although examiner race did not appear to influence S CAN performance for this group of children, the possibility of a race effec t needs further investigation with a larger sample, as does the clinical ut ility of the SCAN as a processing-dependent measure. The significant learni ng effect also suggests potential problems with the test-retest reliability of the SCAN.