Manly J J, Jacobs D M, Sano M, Bell K, Merchant C A, Small S A, Stern Y
Department of Neurology, the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032-3702, USA.
Neurology. 1998 May;50(5):1238-45. doi: 10.1212/wnl.50.5.1238.
We examined the neuropsychological test performance of a randomly selected community sample of English-speaking non-Hispanic African American and white elders in northern Manhattan. All participants were diagnosed as nondemented by a neurologist, whose assessment was made independent of neuropsychological test scores. African American elders obtained significantly lower scores on measures of verbal and nonverbal learning and memory, abstract reasoning, language, and visuospatial skill than whites. After using a stratified random sampling technique to match groups on years of education, many of the discrepancies became nonsignificant; however, significant ethnic group differences on measures of figure memory, verbal abstraction, category fluency, and visuospatial skill remained. Discrepancies in test performance of education-matched African Americans and whites could not be accounted for by occupational attainment or history of medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. These findings emphasize the importance of using culturally appropriate norms when evaluating ethnically diverse elderly for dementia.
我们对曼哈顿北部一个随机抽取的讲英语的非西班牙裔非裔美国人和白人老年人社区样本进行了神经心理学测试。所有参与者均由神经科医生诊断为无痴呆症，该诊断独立于神经心理学测试分数。非裔美国老年人在语言和非语言学习与记忆、抽象推理、语言及视觉空间技能测试中的得分显著低于白人。在使用分层随机抽样技术使两组在受教育年限上匹配后，许多差异变得不再显著；然而，在图形记忆、语言抽象、类别流畅性和视觉空间技能测试中，显著的种族差异仍然存在。教育程度匹配的非裔美国人和白人在测试表现上的差异无法用职业成就或高血压、糖尿病等病史来解释。这些发现强调了在评估不同种族老年人的痴呆症时使用文化上合适的常模的重要性。
