Cognitive Differences between Healthy Monolingual and Bilingual Anglophones on the English Version of the Dépistage Cognitif de Québec: A New Screening Tool for Atypical Dementia

Type of resource
Authors/collaborators
Title
Cognitive Differences between Healthy Monolingual and Bilingual Anglophones on the English Version of the Dépistage Cognitif de Québec: A New Screening Tool for Atypical Dementia
Abstract
The authors note that cognitive abilities between monolingual and bilingual individuals may differ, making it an important factor to consider during the administration of cognitive screening tools. Otherwise, assessments could be subject to misinterpretation, leading to possible inaccurate diagnoses. Their current project aimed to compare cognitive performance of healthy older monolingual and bilingual Anglophones on the English version of a new cognitive screening test designed for better recognition of atypical dementia: the Dépistage Cognitif de Québec (DCQ; www.dcqtest.org). The DCQ was administered by qualified psychometricians to 85 native English-speaking participants aged 50 years and over, in various sites across Canada. Language proficiency was established using the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q). The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) was used to exclude individuals with cognitive impairments. Participant recruitment was done at the Clinique Interdisciplinaire de la Mémoire in Quebec City, the Douglas Hospital Research Center in Montreal, the Research Center on Aging in Sherbrooke, and four institutions outside Quebec. Global cognition was assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a 12-minute cognitive screening tool to detect mild cognitive impairment and dementia. The MoCA is scored out of 30 points and assesses visuospatial and executive function, naming ability, memory, attention, language, abstraction, and orientation. To determine participants’ linguistic profiles and to place them in either the monolingual or bilingual group for the authors’ current study, all participants completed the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q). This questionnaire measures an individual’s level of bilingualism based on their self-reported second language proficiency for reading, writing, and oral comprehension. The author’s study indicated that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on the DCQ total score, which was driven by a bilingual advantage on the Language Index. Following a Bonferroni correction, the bilingual advantage on the overall DCQ scores did not persist but the advantage on the Language Index remained. Overall, the effect sizes ranged between medium and large. We found no significant differences between groups on any of the other DCQ indexes: visuospatial, executive, memory, and behavioural.
Publication
International Journal of Bilingualism
Date
December 2023
Volume
Vol. 27
Issue
no.6
Pages
942-959
URL
Language
en
Citation
Lévesque, Marianne, Marie-Christine Ouellet, Synthia Meilleur-Durand, Rémi W. Bouchard, and and fourteen other authors. “Cognitive Differences between Healthy Monolingual and Bilingual Anglophones on the English Version of the Dépistage Cognitif de Québec: A New Screening Tool for Atypical Dementia.” International Journal of Bilingualism Vol. 27, no. no.6 (December 2023): 942–959. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/13670069221132199.
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