Assessing Phonemic Fluency in Multilingual Contexts: Letter Selection Methodology and Demographically Stratified Norms for Three South African Language Groups |
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| Authors: | Helen L. Ferrett Paul D. Carey Angela L. Baufeldt Simone Conradie Tessa Dowling |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa;2. Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa;3. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, South Africa;4. Department of General Linguistics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa;5. Department of African Languages, Faculty of Arts, University of Cape Town, South Africa |
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| Abstract: | Because of their global clinical utility, phonemic fluency tests are frequently incorporated into neuropsychological assessment batteries. However, in heterogeneous societies their use is complicated by the lack of careful attention to using letters of equivalent difficulty across languages, and the paucity of norms stratified by relevant sociodemographic variables. In accordance with the International Test Commission's guidelines for adaptation of test material in multilingual contexts, this study provides (1) an internationally replicable methodological template for selecting appropriate letter sets; (2) empirical evidence to substantiate the equivalence of a letter set across three languages; (3) a template for evaluating the relative impact of sociodemographic variables on phonemic fluency; and (4) appropriately stratified norms for the letter set SBL (English and Afrikaans) / IBL (Xhosa) in a sample (N = 512) of urban participants (7–25 years with 1–17 years of education) from the Cape Town region of the Western Cape province of South Africa. |
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| Keywords: | cross-cultural comparison education executive function language neuropsychological tests |
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