Linguistic factors associated with phonemic fluency performance in a sample of bilingual Hispanic undergraduate students

ABSTRACT

Research has demonstrated that bilingualism impacts neuropsychological performance, but the findings on its effects on verbal fluency have been mixed. This study compared the verbal fluency performance of non-Hispanic White monolingual speakers with a Hispanic bilingual population. Ninety-nine Spanish-English bilingual Hispanic and thirty English-speaking monolingual non-Hispanic White undergraduates completed the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT). Students also completed a general cognitive and English reading measure. Bilingual students completed an in-depth language questionnaire to gauge language dominance, age of acquisition of second language (AoA), and first language learned. Results revealed that both language dominance and AoA influence phonemic fluency performance in bilingual Hispanics. English-dominant and balanced bilingual students performed similarly to monolingual students. Spanish-dominant bilingual students scored lower than monolinguals or the other bilingual groups. Bilingual students with early AoA (<7 years) performed on par with monolingual students. Late AoA bilinguals performed significantly lower than early AoA bilinguals. Results illustrate the clinical importance of obtaining a full linguistic history of bilingual clients in order to accurately interpret verbal fluency performance, as this is essential for proper diagnoses and treatments.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• bilingualism
• verbal fluency

Acknowledgments

This research comprised a major portion of the first author’s dissertation project in partial fulfillment of a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology and is registered with Dissertation Abstracts International. Portions of the information contained in this report were presented at the 38th Annual International Neuropsychological Society conference in Acapulco, Mexico; the 40th Annual International Neuropsychological Society conference in Montreal, Canada; the 41st Annual International Neuropsychological Society conference in Kona, HI; and the 43rd Annual International Neuropsychological Society conference in Denver, Colorado.

Disclosure of interest

Neither author has any conflicts of interest regarding this research study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of New Mexico and the Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy at UNM.