Two samples of participants from the U.S.–Mexico
Borderland (N = 185) versus
Spain (N = 205) were compared on 16
Spanish-language neuropsychological measures. In most measures
the two samples obtained similar results. There were some
significant main effects of place of birth and some significant
interactions between education and place of birth. Differences
between the samples diminished with increasing levels of
education. Within the Borderland sample, percent of life
span spent in the U.S. and bilingual status were correlated
with performance in some tests. Increased percent of life
span spent in the U.S. was negatively correlated with performance
on a Spanish word-generation task, and positively correlated
with performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Bilingual
Borderland participants performed significantly better
than monolingual speakers in learning a list of words.
We suggest that the most likely causes for the observed
interaction effects are documented regional differences
in early SES-related nutrition, medical care, quality of
educational experiences, and general socioeconomic conditions.
(JINS, 1998, 4, 363–379.)