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We examined the neuropsychological test performance of a randomly selected community sample of English-speaking,non-Hispanic,African American and white elders in northern Manhattan.All participants were diagnosed as nondemented by a neurologist whose assessment was made independent of neuropsychological test scores.African-American elders obtained significantly lower scores on measures of verbal and nonverbal learning and memory,abstract reasoning,language and visuospatial skill than whites. After using a stratified random sampling to match groups on years of education,many of the discrepancies became nonsignificant;however, significant ethnic group differences on measures of figure memory,verbal abstraction,category fluency and visuospatial skill remained.Discrepancies in test performance of education-matched African-Americans and whites could not be accounted for by occupational attainment of history of medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.These findings emphasize the importance of using culturally appropriate norms when evaluating ethnically diverse elderly for dementia. |
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