Neuropsychological assessments of cognitive aging in monolingual and bilingual older adults

Standardized neuropsychological tests are routinely used as diagnostic criteria in aging populations and are an important piece of evidence for the identification of clinical pathology and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Tests include such measures as the Mini Mental Status Exam, Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and others. These tests cover a range of functions including working memory, verbal fluency, prospective memory, and task switching. Interpretation of test results is based on comparison of the participant's score to standard scores that have been normed on a population database. However, a growing body of research has shown that the skills underlying these tests may be significantly different in monolingual and bilingual older adults, especially for those experiencing cognitive impairment, yet the standardized test scores do not account for such differences. Therefore, results of neuropsychological tests may be different for bilingual populations than for monolinguals, and those differences may be misinterpreted. The issue is important because the consequences of these interpretative errors may be over-or under-diagnosis of cognitive impairment. The present study examined the neuropsychological test scores of monolingual and bilingual older adults who were experiencing healthy aging or cognitive impairment to establish patterns in these scores that can more accurately guide the interpretation for bilingual older adults by considering group differences in the underlying abilities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.