Bilingualism and Its Impact on Psychological Assessment

The role of bilingualism and biculturalism is reviewed with a specific focus on their measurement as well as their impact on psychological tests. Bilingualism appears to be a deterrent or confounding factor in the measurement of psychological constructs early in development but appears to have a facilitating impact on such constructs later in life. For example, there is increasing evidence that executive function is improved in bilingual individuals. The measurement of bilingualism, however, is not as simple as previously considered largely because of the increasing understanding that constructs that are assessed linguistically are clearly affected by other and possibly more salient variables, such as cultural ones. In addition, Spanish language demographics were described and types of bilingualism for Spanish speakers were presented.