The effects of bilingualism and acculturation on neuropsychological test performance: A study with Armenian Americans

Given the extensive immigration into the United States from various countries and the strong ethnic communities that exist within the major cities of the United States, the effects of bilingualism and acculturation on neuropsychological test performance of non-Hispanic ethnic Americans are crucial. This study examined differences in neuropsychological test performance between non-Armenian, monolingual, Caucasian-American adults (NA) and Americans of Armenian descent (AA), with varying levels of bilingual fluency and several immigration-related factors. Forty bilingual AA (62.5% female) and 43 NA (57.5% female) participants were administered a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests. AAs were subdivided into groups based on their performance on the Wide Range Achievement Test-3 (WRAT-3) reading measure (Wilkinson, 1993; creating low- and high-English Fluency groups), an experimental Armenian version of a word-reading test (creating low- and high-Armenian Fluency groups), and the Marin and Marin Acculturation scales (1991) for Language Preference (creating low- and high-language acculturated groups) and Social Relations (creating low- and high-socially acculturated groups). AAs were also grouped by years of Armenian education, immigration age, and origin of immigration. A factor analysis on the 30 test variables yielded 10 meaningful neuropsychological factors (i.e., Learning, Narrative Memory, Nonverbal Processing, Language, Fluency, Conceptualization, Mental Control, Set-Shifting, Attention, and Processing Speed). The data were analyzed using analysis of covariance for each factor, controlling for age, education, and English Fluency. The Language factor emerged as particularly vulnerable, with poorer performance seen by low-English, low-Armenian, low-language acculturated, low-socially acculturated, late immigrating AAs, as well as AAs with more than six years of Armenian education, compared to NAs. Similar results were seen for Narrative Memory with these groups, though the differences were not as striking as for Language. Poorer performance on Learning was seen by Low Language Acculturated AAs compared to High Language Acculturated AAs and NAs. Three variables emerged as strong predictors of performance on Language, Narrative Memory and Learning factors: English Fluency, Language Acculturation, and Immigration Age. These results suggest that differences can be seen on neuropsychological tests with strong verbal components (e.g., vocabulary, naming, story-memory, and verbal list-learning) in bilingual Caucasian immigrants as compared to monolingual, US-born Caucasian-Americans.