Clinical utility of the WASI-II and its association with acculturation levels among Arab American adolescent males

Neuropsychologists attempting to provide an ethical and clinically useful assessment of intellectual functioning among immigrant youth face great challenges. For instance, immigrant youth undergo an acculturation process that can profoundly affect cognitive development including the reliability and validity of norm-referenced intelligence tests. This study explored the clinical utility of the WASI-II among male adolecent Arab Americans (n = 80). It also explored the association between sociodemographic proxy variables and acculturation rating scale measures with verbal and language-reduced IQ performances. Results showed lower verbal than language-reduced IQs but discrepancies occurred in the context of signficant variability within and between each IQ index. The difference between each IQ index was mostly associated with sociodemographic proxy factors. English language competence was associated with performance on Vocabulary. No acculturation variable was substantially associated with language-reduced IQ after controlling for parent income. Performance on Matrix Reasoning was not influenced by any sociodemographic or acculturation factors. Results showed that proxy acculturation variables were not associated with WASI-II outcomes. Important clinical and research implications, and limitations were outlined.