CROSS-CULTURAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT - A COMPARISON OF RANDOMLY SELECTED, DEMOGRAPHICALLY MATCHED COHORTS OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING AND SPANISH-SPEAKING OLDER ADULTS

As the US population of elderly Hispanics continues to grow, there is an increasingly greater need for neuropsychological measures that are appropriate for assessing Spanish-speaking elders. The current study c ompared the performance of randomly selected, community-based samples of English- and Spanish-speaking elders on a brief neuropsychological test battery. Subject groups were matched for age and education. Multi variate analysis indicated significant group differences on the test b attery. English and Spanish speakers scored comparably on many languag e-based tasks, but Spanish speakers scored significantly lower on almo st all of the nonverbal measures. Significant group differences were o bserved on multiple-choice matching and recognition memory for stimuli from the Benton Visual Retention Test, as well as on Identities and O ddities from the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale, category fluency, and C omplex Ideational Material from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examinat ion (BDAE). Results suggest that caution is warranted when using nonve rbal as well as verbal measures to assess non English-speaking individ uals.