Formal language assessment in low-educated healthy subjects

Abstract Although many studies have shown the influence of education on cognition, the impact of low education on the various cognitive functions appears to differ. The hypothesis of the present study is that, with regards to language, the use of parameters derived from populations with 5-8 years of education leads to false-positive results. Objective: to determine the influence of low education on the language tasks assessed by the MTL-Brazil Battery Methods: 30 healthy adults with 2-4 years of education were submitted to the MTL-Br Battery, comprising 22 subtests. The data were submitted to descriptive statistical analysis for each subtest and Z-scores were then calculated based on the parameters of a population with 5-8 years of education. All participants would be considered impaired if the Battery had been applied according to published normative criteria for a population with 5-8 years of education. Results: Separate analysis revealed that published scores for 17 out of the 22 Battery tasks were inappropriate for a population with 2-4 years of education. Conclusion: Education was found to effect performance for each of the language abilities differently. In addition, the study results can be applied to language assessments of individuals with 1-4 years of education using the MTL-Br battery, since this is the only language test for adults available in Brazil, and for which there are no normative data for low-educated subjects.