Acculturation, reading level, and neuropsychological test performance among african american elders

A comprehensive neuropsychological battery was administered to a sample of nondemented African American and non-Hispanic White participants in an epidemiological study of normal aging and dementia in the northern Manhattan community. The physician’s diagnosis was used as a “gold standard” for the absence of dementia because the neurological assessment was made independent of the participant’s performance on the neuropsychological battery. Perhaps traditional neuropsychological tests simply do not elicit the full potential of all African Americans and other ethnic minority groups. African American elders obtained significantly lower scores than Whites on measures of word list learning and memory, figure memory, abstract reasoning, fluency, and visuospatial skill, even though the groups were matched on years of education. African American elders who were more acculturated obtained higher scores than traditional African American elders on all measures except delayed recall of a word list, orientation, and nonverbal abstraction.