Abstracts

Rationale: It is widely understood that various neuropsychological domains may be impacted in children with seizure disorders, depending on variables such as seizure location, age of onset, medication, and severity of seizures. However, there is little known regarding the impact that bilingualism has on the neurocognitive profile of pediatric epilepsy patients. Previous research has demonstrated that bilingual individuals tend to differ from their monolingual peers on various measures of intellectual ability. Bilingualism may also mitigate the deleterious impact that neurodegenerative illnesses have on a variety of domains due to the recruitment of different brain regions during cognitive tasks and increased opportunities to practice cognitive control. Given these findings, the goal of the present study was to elucidate the neurocognitive differences between bilingual and monolingual pediatric epilepsy patients in the domains of intellectual ability. Methods: The sample included 24 (11 bilingual; 13 monolingual) pediatric patients diagnosed with epilepsy. Nine of the bilingual participants were fluent in English and Spanish, one was fluent in English and Korean, and one was fluent in English and Tagalog. All participants were English-language dominant at the time of evaluation. There were no significant differences in age at, or time since diagnosis between the two groups. As part of a routine comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation, the participants were administered measures of intellectual ability such as the Stanford-Binet, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, and the Differential Abilities Scale. Full scale IQ, verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, processing speed, and working memory results between the two groups were compared and differences were analyzed using ANCOVA, t-tests, and simple linear regression. Analyses were controlled for socioeconomic status (SES), which was determined using the Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status. Results: A significant differences was observed between the groups on processing speed (p < .05) and approaching significance on working memory (p = .06) with monolinguals scoring higher on both measures. Verbal comprehension was found to be significantly lower than perceptual reasoning in the bilingual group (p<.01), while verbal comprehension was higher (though not significantly) than perceptual reasoning in the monolingual group. Additionally, earlier age of onset appeared to affect bilinguals more adversely than monolinguals with regards to full scale IQ, perceptual reasoning, and processing speed. Conclusions: Results indicate that there are noteworthy differences between the neurocognitive profiles of monolingual versus bilingual children with epilepsy. Specifically, bilingual patients demonstrate increased risk for declines in certain aspects of intellectual functioning as a function of age at onset. Due to the small sample size of this study, further research is needed to better clarify the role that bilingualism plays in the neurocognitive outcome of pediatric epilepsy patients.