One popular perception is that bilingualism has a positive effect on cognitive skills, known as “the bilingual advantage.” As an illustration, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (2010) listed the advantages of bilingualism as: being able to learn new words easily breaking down words by sounds being able to use information in new ways putting words into categories coming up with solutions to problems and good listening skills. This is because bilingualism has a general effect on cognition, the nature of which is much debated. Norms developed for monolingual speakers in either Spanish or English may not give an accurate depiction of normal performance for bilingual Hispanic Americans ( Gasquoine, Croyle, Cavazos-Gonzalez, & Sandoval, 2007 Roberts, Garcia, Desrochers, & Hernandez, 2002 Rosselli, Ardila, Navarrete, & Matute, 2010). When using conventional Spanish or English monolingual norms for language format neuropsychological measures with bilingual Hispanic Americans, individual estimates of preexisting skill level are recommended over the 50th percentile.īilingual advantage, Neuropsychological norms, False positive, Deficit measurement, Preexisting neuropsychological skill estimate Introduction
For language format measures, repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance showed that individual estimates of preexisting skill level in English generated the mean number of false positives most approximate to that expected from the normal distribution, whereas the 50th percentile of conventional English language norms did the same for visual-perceptual format measures. Participants were tested in separate sessions in Spanish and English in the counterbalanced order on La Bateria Neuropsicologica and the original English language tests on which this battery was based. This was studied by comparing neuropsychological false-positive rates using the 50th percentile of conventional norms and individual comparison standards (Picture Vocabulary or Matrix Reasoning scores) as estimates of preexisting neuropsychological skill level against the number expected from the normal distribution for a consecutive sample of 56 neurologically intact, bilingual, Hispanic Americans. Conventional neuropsychological norms developed for monolinguals likely overestimate normal performance in bilinguals on language but not visual-perceptual format tests.
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