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Metabolic Brain Disease
Published in: Metabolic Brain Disease 2/2014

01-06-2014 | Original Paper

The cross-cultural utility of foreign- and locally-derived normative data for three WHO-endorsed neuropsychological tests for South African adolescents

Authors: Helen L. Ferrett, Kevin G. F. Thomas, Susan F. Tapert, Paul D. Carey, Simone Conradie, Natalie L. Cuzen, Dan J. Stein, George Fein

Published in: Metabolic Brain Disease | Issue 2/2014

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Abstract

Interpretation of neuropsychological tests may be hampered by confounding sociodemographic factors and by using inappropriate normative data. We investigated these factors in three tests endorsed by the World Health Organization: the Grooved Pegboard Test (GPT), the Children’s Color Trails Test (CCTT), and the WHO/UCLA version of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). In a sample of 12-15-year-old, Afrikaans- and English-speaking adolescents from the Cape Town region of South Africa, analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) demonstrated that quality of education was the sociodemographic factor with the biggest influence on test performance, and that age also significantly influenced GPT and CCTT performance. Based on those findings, we provide appropriately stratified normative data for the age group in question. Comparisons between diagnostic interpretations made using foreign normative data versus those using the current local data demonstrate that it is imperative to use appropriately stratified normative data to guard against misinterpreting performance.
Footnotes
1
For instance, chicken replaced turkey, and herdboy replaced ranger.
 
2
But note the typographical error for the 5th item of list A, which should read plane, not place
 
3
These three problematic items were: (1) boot/stewel- the Afrikaans word is used rarely (and only in more formal language contexts), and so the semantically compatible words shoe/skoen weresubstituted; (2) plate/bakkie—the Afrikaans word bakkie is ambiguous in that it could take the meaning of either bowl or truck, and so the semantically compatible words plate/bord were substituted; (3) bee/by—the Afrikaans word by is a homophone, and could be heard as taking the meaning of the English words at, bee, or mood; hence, and to ensure that the word was understood in its original semantic category (i.e., insects), we used the Afrikaans word gogga, as a generic description of a bug.
 
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Metadata
Title
The cross-cultural utility of foreign- and locally-derived normative data for three WHO-endorsed neuropsychological tests for South African adolescents
Authors
Helen L. Ferrett
Kevin G. F. Thomas
Susan F. Tapert
Paul D. Carey
Simone Conradie
Natalie L. Cuzen
Dan J. Stein
George Fein
Publication date
01-06-2014
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Metabolic Brain Disease / Issue 2/2014
Print ISSN: 0885-7490
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7365
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11011-014-9495-6

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