American University of Paris, Department of Psychology.

 

 

The Word Memory Test is a well validated measure for mental effort. The test appears quite robust for effects of age and intelligence: the WMT can be used for children who have attained a 3rd grade reading level. Moreover, mentally retarded adults perform normally on the task. However, in neuropsychological practice, we often test patients from immigrant populations who do have good reading ability in another language and have a normal to high intelligence, but are not native speakers of the language in which they are tested. This might lead to false positives when they perform under the cut-off score of an effort test. These populations might be at risk of being falsely accused of underperforming.

We are testing undergraduate students (Beginner level, Intermediate level, or Advanced/bilingual level in French) with different native tongues and cultural backgrounds on the computerized French WMT.