Foteini Amanatidou*
Background: Interlingual and cross-cultural sensitivity in screening and diagnosis for dementia: A literature review. Widely used neuropsychological tools, like the MMSE and the MoCA test, have difficulty distinguishing dementia in populations deviating from the norm. Namely: Illiterates, ethnic minorities and Deaf people. This review aimed to show how common neuropsychological tools can be insensitive to the characteristics of these populations and to highlight the efforts that have been done to adapt neuropsychological tools and to create new, less culturally affected ones.
Methods and findings: A review of 38 studies (published between 1960 and 2022) that found the ICMR-NCTB battery suitable for people without typical education and immigrants from developing countries and the RUDAS test less influenced by the language and the education level than the MMSE. Multidimensional equivalence emerged as very important in the procedure of translating or adapting neuropsychological tools. For Deaf people, it is preferable to create new tools in the sign language rather than adapt already existing ones.
Conclusions: The higher prevalence of dementia in people from linguistic, ethnic and cultural minorities is reflected in existing neuropsychological tools, which do not meet the needs of these minorities. The increase in the prevalence of dementia worldwide makes the finding of ways by which we can distinguish dementia cross- culturally necessary.
Published Date: 2025-03-12; Received Date: 2024-06-05
