Processing speed in patients with pediatric cancer: Psychosocial considerations

Pediatric cancer treatments may contribute to slower processing, while cultural considerations (e.g., SES) can influence outcomes and tend to be disproportionately lower in racial/ethnic minorities. Given increased risk for certain cancers in Hispanic/Latine children and rising Spanish exposure in the United States, the purpose of this study was to examine differences in processing speed between cancer survivors based on household language exposure: English vs. mixed language (ML; i.e. monolingual Spanish-speaking or bilingual Spanish/English-speaking). 128 patients ages 8-21 with leukemia/lymphoma completed screening. As expected, SES was lower in patients from ML households based on parental education (U = 355.00, p<.001) and estimated household income (U = 1031.500, p<.001). Despite this, processing speed (assessed using the written and oral trials of the Symbol Digit Modalities Test; SDMT) was average (SDMT-W x̅=-.13, SDMT-O x̅=.32), with no significant differences between language groups (F(2,120)=0.966, p=.384). Post-hoc analyses revealed time since diagnosis did not predict performance on oral trial for either group or the whole sample, while poorer performance on written trial was noted among the English-only group when further from diagnosis (SDMT-W F(1,57)=7.829, p=.007). Stable ML group trajectory regardless of time since diagnosis may reflect resiliency among children with Spanish exposure.