Bilingualism, assessment language, and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in Mexican Americans

Abstract

Background/objectives: Assessment of cognition in linguistically diverse aging populations is a growing need. Bilingualism may complicate cognitive measurement precision, and bilingualism may vary across Hispanic/Latinx sub-populations. We examined the association among bilingualism, assessment language, and cognitive screening performance in a primarily non-immigrant Mexican American community.

Design: Prospective, community-based cohort study: The Brain Attack Surveillance in Corpus Christi (BASIC)-Cognitive study.

Setting: Nueces County, Texas.

Participants: Community-dwelling Mexican Americans age 65+, recruited door-to-door using a two-stage area probability sampling procedure.

Measurements: Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); self-reported bilingualism scale. Participants were classified as monolingual, Spanish dominant bilingual, English dominant bilingual, or balanced bilingual based upon bilingualism scale responses. Linear regressions examined relationships among bilingualism, demographics, cognitive assessment language, and MoCA scores.

Results: The analytic sample included 547 Mexican American participants (60% female). Fifty-eight percent were classified as balanced bilingual, the majority (88.6%) of whom selected assessment in English. Balanced bilinguals that completed the MoCA in English performed better than balanced bilinguals that completed the MoCA in Spanish (b = -4.0, p < 0.05). Among balanced bilinguals that took the MoCA in Spanish, education outside of the United States was associated with better performance (b = 4.4, p < 0.001). Adjusting for demographics and education, we found no association between the degree of bilingualism and MoCA performance (p's > 0.10).

Conclusion: Bilingualism is important to consider in cognitive aging studies in linguistically diverse communities. Future research should examine whether cognitive test language selection affects cognitive measurement precision in balanced bilinguals.

Keywords: Hispanic; Latinx; Mexican American; bilingualism; cognition.

© 2021 The American Geriatrics Society.

Figures

Figure 1.

Bilingualism classification and MoCA test language selection. The figure displays frequencies of test language selection for participants classified as monolingual English, Bilingual-English dominant, Bilingual-Balanced, Bilingual-Spanish dominant, and monolingual Spanish.