Cognitive Test Performance in Racialised Minorities

Abstract

Systematic review: Research has shown that racialised minorities perform poorer on executive functions tasks compared to their White counterparts. Some suggest that factors such as culture, education, and psychosocial variables such as racial discrimination might explain this discrepancy. However, there is a scarcity of reviews that looked at causal evidence to understand the relationship between racial discrimination and executive function with greater clarity. Therefore, this systematic review aimed to investigate experimental studies that manipulated racial discrimination and its impact on executive functions among racialised minorities. A literature search was conducted using Ovid and Web of Science (January 1975 – February 2023) to find studies that compared performance on at least one neuropsychological measure assessing any of the three core executive functions, recruited adult racialised minorities exposed to racial discrimination compared to a control group, and were published in English. Eight studies (n = 802) met the inclusion and were all conducted in North America. Results indicate that exposure to racial discrimination can impact executive functions as assessed by the Stroop task with a small-to medium effect size. This can have clinical implications for neuropsychological assessment with racialised minorities. However, the current evidence base is limited by using only one measure of executive function, lack of a pre-measure in many studies, lack of exploring potential mediators and moderators, and the lack of including diverse samples of racialised minorities. Further research is needed to further strengthen the evidence base of this relationship.Empirical paper: Objective: It has been suggested that variables such as education, culture and acculturation, and psychosocial factors such as racism and test anxiety could be associated with test performance among racialised minorities. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between acculturation, racial discrimination, test anxiety, and neuropsychological test scores in a UK sample of racialised minorities. Method: A total of 57 racialised minority individuals residing in the UK were recruited online. Participants completed online questionnaires and a battery of neuropsychological tasks. Acculturation, test anxiety, and racial discrimination served as predictor variables, while neuropsychological test scores were the outcome variables. Regression analysis was used to examine the associations between the predictor variables and test scores. Results: Regression analysis indicated that most predictors were not significant across analyses. However, acculturation showed a significant negative association with working memory performance (Digit span backward). Racial discrimination predicted poorer executive function performance (Trail-making-test B), while test anxiety was associated with fewer errors on a processing speed task (Trail-making-test A). Conclusion: The study's findings highlight the importance of considering cultural and psychosocial variables in neuropsychological assessments with racialised minorities. Clinicians should be mindful of the relationship of these variables with test performance to ensure culturally sensitive evaluations. However, the findings are limited by the small sample size, lack of racial/ethnic diversity, and the relatively high education and young age of participants. Further research with larger and more diverse samples is needed to enhance our understanding of these associations with neuropsychology test performance.