Linguistic and cultural adaptation of the Barcelona-2 Test in 6 Latin American dialect variants

Neuropsychological tests must be adapted to local sociocultural realities. The Barcelona-2 test (TB-2) is a tool used in Spain and Hispanic America to perform a general neuropsychological assessment. The objective of this study was to develop versions of the TB-2 for 6 major dialects of Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, taking into account cross-cultural and cross-linguistic factors.

Working documents consisting of sheets with 3 columns were established: original version, proposals for changes and justification of the proposals. The phonetic-prosodic aspect of the evaluation, which was controlled by local evaluators, was excluded. The documents were completed by at least two researchers for each dialect and subsequently agreed upon. The proposals were compared with the meanings of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Dictionary of Americanisms of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. The final versions were the subject of 6 acceptability studies.

Versions have been established for 19 countries with 47 working documents for the Mexican, Caribbean, Central American, Andean, Austral, and Chilean TB-2 dialect varieties.

For the first time a neuropsychological test, initially developed in Catalan and Spanish, is simultaneously adapted to the 6 major Hispanic American dialects. These versions will avoid local interpretations and improvisations when administering the test in any Spanish-speaking territory. Administration to broad populations without and with cognitive impairment should allow for completing or modifying some of the changes and, perhaps, adjusting the score ranges.