Cultural variation in verbal versus spatial neuropsychological function across the life span.

Abstract

Established culture-invariant measures are needed for cross-cultural assessment of verbal and visuospatial speed of processing and working memory across the life span. In this study, 32 younger and 32 older adults from China and from the United States were administered numerically based and spatially based measures of speed of processing and working memory. Chinese superiority on the numerically based tasks was found for younger adults. Age and increasing task demands diminished this cultural effect, as predicted by the framework proposed by D. C. Park, R. Nisbett, and T. Hedden (1999). However, the visuospatial measures of both working memory and speed of processing did not differ cross-culturally for either age group. The authors concluded that these visuospatial measures provide culture-invariant estimates of cognitive processes in East Asian and Western cultures, but that numerically based tasks show evidence of cultural and linguistic biases in performance levels.

The Equivalence and Difference between the English and Chinese Language Versions of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status

“…Examination of the attention subtests found this to be due to differences in the digit span subtest, where we were observed a difference to the English version for all Chinese language versions. Differences in performance on numerical based tasks between English and Chinese speakers have been well documented (Stigler, Lee & Stevenson, 1986;Hedden et al, 2002;Chen, Cowell, Varley & Wang, 2009;Ting, Hameed, Tan, Gabriel & Doshi, 2014). Specifically the literature supports our finding that Chinese speakers have larger digit spans than their English speaking counterparts (Hedden et al, 2002;Chen et al, 2009).…”

“…Specifically the literature supports our finding that Chinese speakers have larger digit spans than their English speaking counterparts (Hedden et al, 2002;Chen et al, 2009). This difference has been attributed to the shorter articulation time needed for Chinese digits compared to English digits, which in turn results in a lower processing load (Stigler, 1986;Hedden et al, 2002;Cheung & Kemp, 1993, 1994). …”

“…Differences in performance on numerical based tasks between English and Chinese speakers have been well documented (Stigler, Lee & Stevenson, 1986;Hedden et al, 2002;Chen, Cowell, Varley & Wang, 2009;Ting, Hameed, Tan, Gabriel & Doshi, 2014). Specifically the literature supports our finding that Chinese speakers have larger digit spans than their English speaking counterparts (Hedden et al, 2002;Chen et al, 2009). This difference has been attributed to the shorter articulation time needed for Chinese digits compared to English digits, which in turn results in a lower processing load (Stigler, 1986;Hedden et al, 2002;Cheung & Kemp, 1993, 1994).…”

“…The RBANS index scores were calculated by first standardising the 12 raw subtest scores across age categories using the means and standard deviations produced by Collinson et al (2014). Population specific norms were used as opposed to the standard US norms due to evidenced differences in neuropsychological performance between Asian and Caucasian populations (Boone, Victor, Wen, Razani & Ponto´n, 2007;Fuji, 2010;Hedden et al, 2002;and Shan, Chen, Lee & Su, 2008). The age standardised scores were then transformed to scores with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15.…”

Aging, self-referencing, and medial prefrontal cortex

“…All elderly participants scored at least a 28 (out of 30) on the MMSE, indicating that the sample did not include demented participants. Young and elderly groups both completed speed of processing (Hedden et al, 2002) and vocabulary (Shipley, 1986) measures. Scores are presented in Table 1.…”