Issues in Cognitive Assessment with Diverse Groups: Focus on Indigenous Peoples
Learning Objectives:
To understand how linguistic, cultural, and educational diversity interacts with assessment of cognition using international research in the area of clinical neuropsychology.
To understand issues in validity and cultural safety when assessing the cognitive status of Indigenous Peoples.
To provide a brief introduction to the Canadian Indigenous Cognitive Assessment (CICA) screening tool.
Megan E. O’Connell is a registered doctoral clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan who researches neuropsychological measurement relevant to dementia, technology for remote dementia care, and cognitive aging. Accessibility of appropriate services and supports is core to her research program, and Dr. O’Connell is the NPI of Team 15 Rural in the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA). Dr. O’Connell is clinical lead of the Rural and Remote Memory Clinic (RRMC), which is an interdisciplinary diagnostic memory clinic, and she is lead of the CCNA-funded RRMC interventions (RRMCi) with a mandate to deliver appropriate dementia related interventions across SK using technology. Megan is also a co-I on CCNA Team 18 focussing on issues in Indigenous dementia care, she collaborated on the development and validation of the Canadian Indigenous Assessment of Cognition (CICA), and she led a joint CCNA Team 15/18 project to develop culturally safe remote intervention for Indigenous caregivers. She is a member of the Psychology Working Group in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) and has created the normative comparison standards and reliable change indices for the cognition measures in the CLSA.