Language of administration and neuropsychological test performance in neurologically intact Hispanic American bilingual adults

Abstract

This study compared the performance of Hispanic American bilingual adults on Spanish and English language versions of a neuropsychological test battery. Language achievement test scores were used to divide 36 bilingual, neurologically intact, Hispanic Americans from south Texas into Spanish-dominant, balanced, and English-dominant bilingual groups. They were administered the eight subtests of the Bateria Neuropsicologica and the Matrix Reasoning subtest of the WAIS-III in Spanish and English. Half the participants were tested in Spanish first. Balanced bilinguals showed no significant differences in test scores between Spanish and English language administrations. Spanish and/or English dominant bilinguals showed significant effects of language of administration on tests with higher language compared to visual perceptual weighting (Woodcock-Munoz Language Survey-Revised, Letter Fluency, Story Memory, and Stroop Color and Word Test). Scores on tests with higher visual-perceptual weighting (Matrix Reasoning, Figure Memory, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and Spatial Span), were not significantly affected by language of administration, nor were scores on the Spanish/California Verbal Learning Test, and Digit Span. A problem was encountered in comparing false positive rates in each language, as Spanish norms fell below English norms, resulting in a much higher false positive rate in English across all bilingual groupings. Use of a comparison standard (picture vocabulary score) reduced false positive rates in both languages, but the higher false positive rate in English persisted.