Cultural neuropsychology: The new norm.

Abstract

When cultural and linguistic issues in neuropsychology are raised as a topic of discussion, most U.S.-based clinicians and researchers immediately begin to think of ethnic minority groups or people with limited English proficiency. Those who are familiar with recent literature may have associations related to level of acculturation, educational experience, and other variables that, if controlled, have the potential to improve the sensitivity and specificity of neuropsychological instruments in the diagnostic setting. In this way, the dialogue is frequently framed as having to do with the impact of culture and language on cognitive testing and is thus conceptualized as being relevant only to special populations.

Contributing Towards a Cultural Neuropsychology Assessment Decision-Making Framework: Comparison of WAIS-IV Norms from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Spain, United States, and Canada

“…Finally, the significantly low consistency of working memory and processing speed scores obtained from the six WAIS-IV norm sets suggests there may be substantial cultural effects associated with performance on these tests and/or differences in the psychometric treatment of these scores during the norms development process. These findings align with the cultural psychology and neuropsychology literature highlighting how cultural values such as competitive and quick thinking versus cooperative and deliberate behavior may affect test performance (Cagigas & Manly, 2014). For all of these issues, greater access to technical information for cultural-adaptations of the WAIS-IV and increased studies examining their psychometric properties in standardization, non-clinical, and clinical samples would help clarifying factors contributing to cross-test norm differences.…”

“…Using the relative differences from this study, when this same person is scored with Spanish norms they again obtain a high average FSIQ of 111, but their index scores would range from average to very superior, with a projected VCI of 120, PRI of 105, WMI of 101 and PSI of 106. Here, this study demonstrates the importance of neuropsychologists not only familiarizing themselves to an assessment instrument, but also to the broad and nuanced context of the assessment scenario (Cagigas & Manly, 2014;Hays, 2016;Judd, 2009). Second, notably different VCI score patterns suggests the verbal comprehension WAIS-IV construct may have some cultural nuances likely associated with education system differences and representation of advanced education in the Spanish and Mexican WAIS-IV standardization samples may be disproportion to national levels and to the other versions of the WAIS-IV examined in the study.…”

“…Second, notably different VCI score patterns suggests the verbal comprehension WAIS-IV construct may have some cultural nuances likely associated with education system differences and representation of advanced education in the Spanish and Mexican WAIS-IV standardization samples may be disproportion to national levels and to the other versions of the WAIS-IV examined in the study. Neuropsychologists must be aware that cultural adaptations may not adequately assess the constructs they are purported to assess, with variable structural and measurement equivalence (Bryne et al, 2009;Cagigas & Manly, 2014). Finally, the significantly low consistency of working memory and processing speed scores obtained from the six WAIS-IV norm sets suggests there may be substantial cultural effects associated with performance on these tests and/or differences in the psychometric treatment of these scores during the norms development process.…”

“…With increasing globalization, there has been growing concern amongst neuropsychologists regarding best cross-cultural assessment practices (Cagigas & Manly, 2014;Hambleton, Merenda, & Spielberger, 2005). One area of rapid development has been the field of Hispanic neuropsychology, which has not only been tied to changing immigration patterns, but also professional and cultural collaborations throughout North and Latin America (Puente & Ardila, 2000;Puente, Perez-Garcia, Vilar Lopex, Hidalgo-Ruzzante, & Fasfous, 2013).…”

Origins Matter: Culture Impacts Cognitive Testing in Parkinson’s Disease

“…Cultural biases on cognitive testing are not only evident between disparate geographical regions, but also arise within multicultural societies. However, most of this research has been conducted in the USA and focused on differences between racial and ethnic groups, which is confounded by other group differences such as educational attainment, literacy, English proficiency, and socioeconomic status (Chin et al, 2012; Cagigas and Manly, 2014; Krch et al, 2015; Flores et al, 2017; Weuve et al, 2018). While such research is important, it may not generalize to first-generation immigrants living in multicultural societies as new immigrants face several unique issues which do not necessarily reflect the above confounds (for review, see Ferraro, 2016).…”