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Published on: April 23, 2014
Cultural variables influence performance on the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery among people at clinical high
Ryan M Guest1, Katrina Aberizk1, Jean Addington2
1Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Background & Hypothesis:
Prior studies suggest that cognitive batteries normed in the U.S. may not be suitable for populations that differ in English proficiency and/or cultural background. Here, we investigated how cultural variables (i.e., length of residence, native English speaker) influence cognitive performance within a U.S. and Canadian sample of people at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) and healthy control (HC) participants.
Study Design:
The sample consisted of 925 adolescents and adults (664 CHR-P, 261 HC) from the second cohort of the North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study, including 73 (7.9 %) foreign-born participants and 94 (10.2 %) who reported a language other than English as their first language. Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to estimate effects of cultural variables on MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) subtests, separately in each diagnostic group.
Study Results:
A structural model that generated unique estimates for all parameters in group models was selected. For CHR-P, longer length of residence in U.S./Canada related to better performance on Animal Naming (β = 0.09, p = .01), whereas being a native English speaker related to better performance on Letter-Number Span (β = 0.14, p = .001) and Hopkins Verbal Learning Test - Revised (β = 0.10, p = .03). In contrast, no such relationships were observed among HCs.
Conclusions:
Findings extend our understanding of how cultural variables may influence presentation of psychosis-risk syndromes and suggest that being a non-native English speaker or having recently immigrated may hinder performance on certain verbal neuropsychological measures.
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