Dementia-related neuropsychological testing considerations in non-Hispanic White and Latino/Hispanic populations.

Abstract

Hispanic individuals are at greater risk for health disparities, less than optimal health care, and are diagnosed at later stages of cognitive impairment than white non-Hispanics. Acculturation and different attitudes toward test-taking may result in decrements in performance, especially on unfamiliar measures that emphasize speed and accuracy. Non-Hispanic individuals often outperform Hispanic individuals on cognitive and neuropsychological measures in community and clinical populations. Current neuropsychological testing may not provide accurate data related to monolingual and bilingual individuals of Hispanic descent. Testing instruments were identified by searching academic databases using combinations of relevant search terms. Neuropsychological instruments were included if they were designed to detect cognitive impairment, had an administration time of less than 45 minutes, and were available in English. Validity studies were required to employ gold standard comparison diagnostic criteria. Twenty-nine instruments were evaluated in dementia staging, global cognition, memory, memory and visual abilities, working memory and attention, verbal learning and memory, recall, language, premorbid intelligence, literacy/cognitive reserve, visuospatial, attention, problem-solving, problem solving and perception, functional assessment, and mood/daily functioning domains. Spanish-language neuropsychological instruments need to be made widely available and existing instruments to be normed in Spanish to best serve and assess diverse populations. Psychometric data were reported for neuropsychological instruments, which may be administered to Hispanic older adults presenting for evaluation related to dementia-spectrum disorders. This is one of the few reviews to provide an overview of the sensitivity and specificity of available Spanish translated neuropsychological instruments.

Factors affecting cognitive dysfunction screening for Latinx adults with type 2 diabetes

“…Most of the patients discussed their lack of experience with screening for cognitive problems, and most of the providers were unaware of specific guidelines for cognitive screening of people with diabetes. There is still a gap with regard to dementia awareness and screening for cognitive problems in the Latinx community [25] , [26] , [27] . Latinx patients are more likely than non-Latinx whites to report memory problems and cognitive changes [28] , but their screening and diagnosis are delayed despite higher dementia incidence than in non-Latinx whites [29] .…”

Moderation-Mediation Effects in Bilingualism and Cognitive Reserve

“…To systematically identify other possible third variables, moderating or mediating bilingual cognitive reserve effects and the bilingual aging process, additional multivariate studies (i.e., correlational) of the type reported by Kavé et al (2008) ; Ljungberg et al (2013) ; Bak et al (2014) ; Zahodne et al (2014) ; Alladi et al (2016) ; Klein et al (2016) ; Mukadam et al (2017b) ; Burke et al (2019) ; and Hack et al (2019) are crucial for model testing and advancing the field. As it has been argued (e.g., Cronbach, 1975 ), variance of third variables such as moderators and mediators go often unaccounted for.…”

Exploring the Psychological Risk Factors in Children with Epilepsy

“…In cases when generalized and partialtype epilepsy are associated with symptoms of synaptic failure (Joy & Fields, 2019), neurological damage, or manifestation characterized by a hyperexcitability of indefinite duration (Hirosawa, Kikuchi, Fukai, Hino & Kitamura et al, 2018), it may lead to a clinical manifestation of the chronic stage (Kynast, Lampe, Luck, Frisch & Arelin et al, 2018). According to Reddy the variety of antiepileptic drugs, however, does not help a part of epileptic patients (Izadi, Ondek, Schedlbauer, Keselman, Shahlaie & Gurkoff, 2018) who present a form of epilepsy which fails to be fully traced in its clinical symptomatology based on the type of damage it causes (Reilly, Atkinson, Memon, Jones & Dabydeen et al, 2018) and the area in which it lies in the brain (Jones, Asato, Brown, Doss & Felton et al, 2020;Burke, Naseh, Rodriguez, Burgess & Loewenstein, 2019;Noebels, 2015). In most cases what pharmacological treatments do (Cacabelos, 2020;Mollon, Mathias, Knowles, Rodrigue & Koenis et al, 2020;Williams, 2020) is the symptomatic treatment of the concerns of the epileptic patient, who is only able to control the severity of the injury but gives little opportunity to keep the disease under control (Holmes, 2014).…”