But African Americans do not perform as well as whites on these
tests even if test-takers from both ethnic groups have attained
the same number of years of schooling. Because of the lower
scores, healthy African Americans may be more likely to be
misdiagnosed with Alzheimers disease or other cognitive defects.
In an effort to make neuropsychological tests more accurate,
Columbia Health Sciences researchers decided to study whether
quality of education, rather than quantity, could explain the
lower test scores among African Americans. In their study, the
investigators measured quality of schooling by administering a
reading test to 192 elderly African Americans and 192 elderly
non-Hispanic whites from Northern Manhattan. The participants,
who were all 65 years and older, did not have dementia and were
functioning normally in their daily lives. The researchers found
that they could eliminate most of the racial differences found
in the neuropsychological test assessments by factoring in the
scores from the readi