False positive rates in the neuropsychological assessment of neurologically intact bilingual Hispanic American adults

Authors

Cassandra Dayanira Gonzalez, University of Texas-Pan American

Date of Award

12-2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Philip Gasquoine

Second Advisor

Dr. James W. Aldridge

Third Advisor

Dr. Kristin L. Croyle

Abstract

Hispanic Americans perform more poorly than White Americans on neuropsychological tests, leading to a higher misclassification rate of brain injury (false positives) among Hispanics when using the 50th percentile of published norms as the estimate of preexisting neuropsychological skill. This study aimed to determine if using an individual comparison standard to estimate preexisting skill levels would reduce the number of false positives in a sample of 20 bilingual Hispanic American adults. Two individual comparison standards were used: (a) WMLS-R Picture Vocabulary scores, and (b) WMLS-R Picture Vocabulary scores and WAIS-III Matrix Reasoning scores combined. Both individual comparison standards were found to produce less false positives than the 50th percentile of published norms. For all three methods of estimating preexisting skill levels, there were more false positives in English than Spanish.

Comments

Copyright 2010 Cassandra Dayanira Gonzalez. All Rights Reserved.

https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/false-positive-rates-neuropsychological/docview/853095142/se-2?accountid=7119

Granting Institution

University of Texas-Pan American