Multicultural Neuropsychology: Performance of Mandarin-Speaking Children On Widely Used Assessment Instruments

In order to extend the multicultural horizons of neuropsychological assessment in the Chinese mainland, a battery of eight commonly used neurocognitive tests assessing motor speed, verbal and visual-spatial memory, language fluency, attention, and executive functioning were given to 224 Mandarin-speaking school children (107 boys and 117 girls) between the ages of 6 and 12 years. As main effects emerged from a 2 (gender) by 7 (age groups) multivariate analysis of variance (ps less than 0.01), data were arranged by year level (all tests) and additionally by gender and year where the performance of boys and girls significantly differed. It is hoped these preliminary norms will have pragmatic psychodiagnostic utility for those involved in assessing the neuropsychological status of Mandarin-speaking children. (Contains 3 tables.)