Race-Norming of Neuropsychological Tests

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.