Influence of reading ability on neuropsychological performance in African American elders

Use of normative data stratified by education may result in misclassification of African American older adults because reading ability, an estimate of educational attainment, is lower than reported years of education for some African American elders. This study examined the contribution of reading ability versus education to neuropsychological test performance in 86 community-dwelling African American elders ages 56-91 with 8-18 years of education. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that reading ability, but not education, was significantly associated with performances on the Trail Making Test, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, Animal Naming, Digit Span, and the Stroop test. Reading ability was not significantly related to performances on measures of memory. Medium to large effect sizes (Cohen's d = 0.58-1.41) were found when comparing mean performances on neuropsychological measures in groups with low versus high reading scores. Results indicate that reading ability contributes beyond educational attainment to performances on some neuropsychological measures among African American elders. These findings have implications for reducing misclassification among minority populations through the use of appropriate normative data.