Intellectual outcome in monolingual and bilingual pediatric patients with medulloblastoma

The intellectual outcome data of nine children diagnosed with medulloblastoma were collected from comprehensive evaluations developed by the Children's Oncology Group (COG). Evaluations were conducted in order to document the long-term neurocognitive outcome of childhood cancer diagnosis and/or therapy. Participants in the study were divided into two groups based on their languages spoken: bilingual Spanish/English speaking and monolingual English speaking. All participants received treatment consistent with research protocol ACNS0331, which comprised tumor resection, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Verbal and Nonverbal IQ outcome data were collected at two time points after completion of treatment. Although there was not a significant interaction effect between Verbal IQ or Nonverbal IQ scores and language group, monolingual English patients with medulloblastoma showed significantly higher scores on Verbal IQ compared to their bilingual counterparts. These findings suggest that bilingual children may be more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of treatment on Verbal IQ than monolingual children.