Examining Intra- and Interpersonal Variables Involved in Neuropsychological and Personality Assessment: Are Asian Americans the 'Model Examinees'?

摘要

The present project investigated the role of ethnicity, Asian American (AA) cultural immersion level, and examiner-examinee racial match on commonly-used neuropsychological and personality measures (Studies One and Two, respectively). As hypothesized, culturally-different responding occurred between European Americans (EAs) and AAs on neuropsychology and personality tests. Specifically, AAs received higher scores on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) and Developmental Test of Visual Perception - Adult and Adolescent Version (DTVP-A) variables. Contrary to prediction, AAs also scored higher on efficiency-related neuropsychological variables, indicating that they were able to simultaneously exercise fastidiousness and efficiency for these tasks. Results also revealed that AAs and EAs responded differently on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) and the Rorschach Inkblot Method. AAs endorsed more items related to anxiety, paranoia, and anxiety-related disorders on the PAI and provided more unconventional, Aggressive Content (AgC), and Cooperative Movement (COP) responses on the Rorschach. ANOVAs and Fisher's Least Square Differences (LSD) revealed that AA cultural immersion groups generally did not respond differently from one another on neuropsychological or personality tests. One exception was on the inanimate movement ( m) variable on the Rorschach, which suggested that more acculturated AAs experienced more situational anxiety while completing the task than enculturated, bicultural, and marginalized AAs. Last, examiner-examinee racial dis/similarity did not play a significant role in assessment as it does in psychotherapy settings. These studies propose that the neuropsychological and personality tests under investigation can be used with AA groups of varying cultural immersion statuses. Because the samples used in this project were limited to college-aged AA adults from the West Coast with a higher concentration of Chinese Americans and females, the results do not generalize to the broader AA population in the U.S. Future research should attempt to replicate these results with more diverse groups of AAs, including AAs of differing ages, education levels, geographical regions, genders, and socioeconomic statuses. On the whole, these results call for a more thoughtful and critical analysis from practitioners and researchers in order to promote the cultural sensitivity of the field.