Patterns of American immigration and their influence on the acquisition of neuropsychological norms for Hispanics.

This article examines patterns of legal American immigration (migrations to the United States from abroad) and their direct impact on the acquisition of neuropsychological (NP) normative data for Hispanics. The nonrandom and selective nature of these migrations, and their accompanying demographic attributes, are shown to significantly influence the acquisition process. Specifically, the direct impact of several potential sources of bias while procuring NP norms is explored.

The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency.

A group of 317 healthy participants between 54 and 99 years of age performed a verbal fluency task. The participants included Chinese, Hispanic, and Vietnamese immigrants, as well as White and African American English speakers. They were given 1 min to name as many animals as possible in their native language.

Performance of elderly White and African American community residents on the abbreviated CERAD Boston Naming Test.

Differences in the responses of an elderly biracial group of cognitively normal subjects to a 15-item short version of the Boston Naming Test developed for the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) were examined. The subjects consisted of 103 Whites and 136 African Americans who were 70 years of age and older and living in a five-county urban and rural area of North Carolina. They were drawn from the Duke University site of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE).

Concurrent validity of Spanish-language versions of the Mini-Mental State Examination, Mental Status Questionnaire, Information-Memory-Concentration test, and Orientation-Memory-Concentration test: Alzheimer's disease patients and nondemented elderly comparison subjects.

One-hundred fifty-eight elderly Spanish-speaking U.S. residents (81 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and 77 subjects without dementia) were tested with Spanish-language versions of four brief cognitive assessment instruments: the Mini-Mental State Examination (S-MMSE), the Mental Status Questionnaire (S-MSQ), the Information-Memory-Concentration test (S-IMC), and the Orientation-Memory-Concentration test (S-OMC).