Comparison of African-American and white persons with Alzheimer's disease on language measures

We assessed 11 African-American and 32 white subjects with early to midstage AD using seven measures (the Boston Naming Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Shortened Token Test, a modified Reporter's Test, two subtests of a shortened Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, and selected stimuli from the Test of Problem Solving). There were no ethnic differences, with Mini-Mental State Examination score and education accounting for most of the variance between ethnic groups. However, white subjects tended to score higher than African-Americans on five of the seven measures. African-Americans tended to perform better on the Test of Problem Solving, a measure of the pragmatic use of language. Although these preliminary findings suggest no test bias for ethnicity, the trends indicate that language measures should continue to be examined for ethnic differences in larger samples.