Table 1.
Mean and standard deviation of participant characteristics for 44 bilinguals divided by language preference on the left, and by education level on the right.
| Characteristic | Prefer English (n=22) | Prefer Spanish (n=22) | High Education (n=22) | Low Education (n=22) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | |
| Age of Diagnosis | 75.1 | (8.6) | 77.1 | (7.0) | 75.1 | (8.1) | 77.1 | (6.8) |
| Age of Onset | 72.5 | (9.4) | 74.6 | (7.8) | 72.1 | (9.5) | 75.0 | (7.5) |
| Education | 12.9 | (4.2) | 7.4** | (4.7) | 14.6 | (2.6) | 5.6†† | (2.7) |
| MMSE at Diagnosis | 23.8 | (4.3) | 23.8 | (4.1) | 23.4 | (4.0) | 24.2 | (4.4) |
| DRS at Diagnosisb | 117.7 | (11.5) | 110.3* | (12.7) | 119.3 | (9.9) | 108.7†† | (12.9) |
| BNT-based Bilingual Indexa | .59 | (.25) | .47 | (.31) | .64 | (.24) | .42†† | (.28) |
| Self-rated Bilingual Indexab | .72 | (.24) | .55* | (.27) | .74 | (.21) | .52†† | (.27) |
| Percent daily use of Englishc | 86.2 | (15.1) | 13.0* | (24.5) | 75.6 | (30.6) | 21.1†† | (33.9) |
| Age of acquisition of Englishc | 1.5 | (2.7) | 22.7** | (17.2) | 2.9 | (3.9) | 19.9†† | (18.8) |
| English self-rated speaking cd | 6.7 | (0.5) | 3.7** | (1.9) | 6.3 | (0.9) | 4.0†† | (2.3) |
| Spanish self-rated speakingcd | 4.8 | (1.6) | 6.5** | (0.8) | 5.4 | (1.7) | 5.9 | (1.4) |
| Years in Spanish-speaking Country c | 4.1 | (9.2) | 34.2** | (18.6) | 15.0 | (21.7) | 23.2 | (19.7) |
| Dominant language BNT scoree | .64 | (.21) | .56 | (.22) | .67 | (.16) | .53† | (.24) |
| Nondominant language BNT scoree | .36 | (.20) | .29 | (.22) | .43 | (.20) | .22†† | (.17) |
| English BNT scoree | .63 | (.21) | .30** | (.23) | .62 | (.16) | .30†† | (.27) |
| Spanish BNT scoree | .37 | (.21) | .56** | (.22) | .48 | (.24) | .45 | (.23) |
Significant difference between prefer English and prefer Spanish groups at p < .05 level
Significant difference between prefer English and prefer Spanish groups at p < .01 level
Significant difference between low education and high education groups at p < .05 level
Significant difference between low education and high education groups at p < .01 level
Index scores calculated by dividing the nondominant score by the dominant score (see text).
DRS scores are a bit low relative to scores obtained in highly-educated cognitively intact monolingual English speakers. This could be due to a bilingual disadvantage, translation of the test (Peña, 2007) for bilinguals who preferred to be tested in Spanish, and the relatively low education level for some bilinguals in this cohort (the correlation between education level and DRS scores in all 43 bilinguals was robust, r = .497, p < .01; by contrast MMSE scores were not influenced by education level, r = −.069, p = .66).
Degrees of freedom for this comparison were less than 42 but at least 35.
Proficiency level based on self-ratings using a scale of 1–7 with 1 being “little to no knowledge” and 7 being “like a native speaker.”
Proportion of pictures named correctly.