Neuropsychology in Cameroon: First Normative Data for Cognitive Tests among School-Aged Children

Abstract

this study is the first to report normative data on neuropsychological tests among children in Cameroon and constitutes an initial step for the advancement of neuropsychology in this country in particular and in sub-Saharan Africa in general. The battery is currently used in Cameroon with children suffering from Sickle Cell Disease as an aid to detect cerebrovascular complications.

Verbal fluency tests: Normative data for Spanish-speaking pediatric population

“…Similarly, this pattern has been widely reported in other normative data studies of the same tests among children and adolescents (e.g., Beltrán Dulcey & Solís-Uribe, 2012;García et al, 2012;Lozano & Ostrosky-Solís, 2006;Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007;Martins et al, 2016;Nieto et al, 2008;Prigatano et al, 2008;Ruffieux et al, 2009;Tallberg et al, 2011;Van der Elst et al, 2011).…”

“…Girls generally scored better on these tests compared to boys, with the exception of the animal's category in Chile where boys performed better than girls. Studies in adult samples indicate differences in gender depending on the category used during the semantic VFT (Acevedo et al, 2000, Egeland, Landrø, Tjemsland, & Walbaekken, 2006Peña-Casanova et al, 2009;Prigatano et al, 2008;Van Der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2006); however, most studies with children have not reported gender differences in phonological or semantic verbal fluency (Lozano & Ostrosky-Solís, 2006;Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007;Nieto et al, 2008;Riva et al, 2000;Ruffieux et al, 2009;Tallberg et al, 2011;Van der Elst, et al, 2011).…”

“…Several variables have been associated with performance on VFT, but in the case of children and adolescents, the most significant variable is age (Beltrán Dulcey & Solís-Uribe, 2012;García et al, 2012;Lozano & Ostrosky-Solís, 2006;Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007;Martins, Mograbi, Andrade Gabrig, & Charchat-Fichman, 2016;Nieto, Galtier, Barroso, & Espinosa, 2008;Prigatano, Gray, & Lomay, 2008;Ruffieux et al, 2009;Tallberg, Carlsson, & Lieberman, 2011;Van der Elst, Hurks, Wassenberg, Meijs, & Jolles, 2011). Past research has consistently found that older children perform better on VFT.…”

“…Most of normative data studies focus solely on the semantic VFT as described above, using categories such as animals (Butman et al, 2000;García et al, 2012;Lozano & Ostrosky-Solís, 2006;MalloyDiniz et al, 2007;Marino & Alderete, 2010;Martins et al, 2016;Nieto et al, 2008;Prigatano et al, 2008;Ruffieux et al, 2009;Tallberg et al, 2011;Van der Elst et al, 2011), fruits (Martins et al, 2016), clothing (Marino & Alderete, 2010;Martins et al, 2016), tools (Marino & Alderete, 2010), parts of the body (Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007), and food (Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007), all of which are appropriate for children. Among studies that have employed the phonological VFT, most opted for the classic letters (i.e., F, A, and S), although in some cases, especially in Spanishspeaking samples, letters such as P and M have been used (Butman et al, 2000;García et al, 2012;Marino & Alderete, 2010;Martins et al, 2016;Nieto et al, 2008).…”

“…Because VFT are widely used and highly useful, researchers have strived to provide normative data for children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 20 years in countries such as Brazil (Malloy-Diniz et al, 2007;Martins et al, 2016), United States of America (Prigatano et al 2008), Cameroon (Ruffieux et al, 2009), Sweden (Tallberg et al, 2011), andHolland (Van der Elst et al, 2011). Among Spanish-speaking countries, normative data for children has been collected in Spain (García et al, 2012;Nieto et al, 2008), Colombia (Beltrán Dulcey & Solís-Uribe, 2012), Argentina (Butman, Allegri, Harris, & Drake, 2000; Marino & Alderete, 2010), and Mexico (Lozano & Ostrosky-Solís, 2006).…”