Predicting Daily Functional Abilities of Patients with Cognitive Impairment

The focus of this NIH-funded project is to examine how well traditional neuropsychological tests taken by patients with dementia can assist in predicting how they function in their everyday tasks (such as shopping, finances, etc.).

Cultural Factors that Contribute to Neuropsychological Test Performance of Ethnically Diverse Individuals

The aim of this project is to examine the cultural factors that affect the test performance of immigrant, bilingual ethnically diverse individuals.  Accurately assessing cognitive functioning of ethnically diverse individuals is a challenge for the field of neuropsychology, given that traditional tests have primarily been developed for monolingual, English-speaking Americans.  Using such tests with varied ethnic groups may lead to misinterpretation of their test results.  In this project we aim to identify cultural factors, such as level of acculturation and bilingualism, that may contribute to how well or poorly one performs on neurospychological test. 

Validating an Adapted Acculturation  Measure

While there are a number of well validated and reliable acculturation instruments available, most are designed for use with a specific ethnic group (e.g., Koreans).  We have adapted an acculturation measure so that it can be used more globally with varied ethnic immigrant groups, and are in the process of administering the measure in order to obtain validity and reliability indicators for immigrant groups in our study.