title: Race-norming of neuropsychological tests.
abstract: Recent studies in the United States indicate that some neurologically intact minority groupings perform well below White Americans on neuropsychological tests. This has sparked the production of race-norms, especially for African Americans, that seek to reduce false positive rates (i.e., neurologically intact individuals misdiagnosed with cognitive impairment) in neuropsychological assessments. There are problems with this enterprise including: possible justification for inferior/superior treatment of different racial groupings; unknown effects on false negative rates (i.e., cognitive deficit misdiagnosed as normal); the overlooking of factors possibly responsible for group racial differences (e.g., acculturation); non-scientific and non-operational definitions of race/ethnic groupings; and an impossibly large number of potential race/ethnic groupings for which to generate race-norms. An alternative approach is to use a single set of combined race/ethnic norms and estimate preexisting neuropsychological skill levels by using individual comparison standards. This alternative has been poorly researched, a situation that needs correcting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Anthropology, University of Texas-Pan American, 1201 W. University Drive, Edinburg, TX, 78541, USA. drgdrg13@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Philip G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Gasquoine
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000150:complications / Q000208:ethnology / Q000473:pathology / Q000523:psychology; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002493:Central Nervous System Diseases / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology / Q000821:virology; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology / Q000821:virology; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000150:complications / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D009484:Neuropsychology / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D012015:Reference Standards