The performance of bilingual speakers on the Boston Naming Test: linguistic and cultural considerations for Korean-English bilinguals with aphasia

The majority of people with aphasia experience some degree of naming difficulty (Goodglass & Wingfield, 1997). To assess naming ability, the Boston Naming Test (Kaplan, Googlass, & Weintraub, 1983) has been used widely and frequently in clinical practice and research. It has now been adapted to different languages. Despite the international use of the Boston Naming Test, relatively few studies have examined its use with bilingual speakers (e.g. Kohnert, Hernandez, & Bates, 1998).\ud \ud This presentation reports on the performance of Korean-English bilingual speakers on the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and its Korean version (K-BNT) (Kim & Na, 1999). Consistent with previous studies, the bilingual speakers in the current study scored considerably lower than their monolingual counterparts on both tests. Longer length of time and earlier arrival in an English-speaking environment were significantly correlated to both higher BNT scores and lower K-BNT scores. Earlier acquisition of English language was also significantly correlated with lower K-BNT scores. Other factors that may have an impact on bilingual performance include the culturally biased nature of some lexical items in both the BNT and K-BNT and the scoring protocol used in this study. The presentation concludes with a discussion of the clinical implications of such factors when assessing naming ability in Korean-English bilingual speakers with aphasia