posted on 2017-03-14, 11:56authored byRitienne Grima, Sue Franklin
Background: Word-retrieval difficulties are commonly experienced by people with aphasia (PwA) and also by
typically ageing persons. Differentiation between true naming impairments and naming difficulties found in
healthy persons may, therefore, be challenging.
Aims: To investigate the extent to which the Maltese adaptation of the Boston Naming Test (BNT) can identify
people with lexical retrieval difficulties and to differentiate them from people with unimpaired word finding.
Methods & Procedures: Naming performance of a group of PwA was compared with the performance of a control
group. Performance on theMaltese adaptation of the BNT was investigated in terms of scores, range of scores and
error profiles of the two groups.
Outcomes & Results: All PwA scored below the mean score of the controls, indicating that persons who scored
above the mean score may be considered as unimpaired. However, a number of the controls obtained very low
scores that overlapped with the scores obtained by the PwA. This indicated that scores alone cannot be used to
differentiate between impaired and unimpaired people. Some types of errors were only produced by people with
impaired naming, and did not appear at all in error profiles of unimpaired individuals.
Conclusions & Implications: Mild–moderate anomic impairments may be missed if naming impairment is assessed
and diagnosed using a cut-off score. In order to differentiate between people with impaired and unimpaired
naming, it is necessary to look at error profiles, apart from the number of errors, as the presence of atypical errors
may be an important indicator of naming impairments.
History
Publication
International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders;52 (2), pp. 214-226
Publisher
Wiley and Sons
Note
peer-reviewed
Rights
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: "Research Report: Usefulness of investigating error profiles in diagnosis of naming impairments" International Journal of Language and Communiation Disorders, 52 (2), pp. 214-226 which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/1460-6984.12266. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-828039.html#terms