title: Caution warranted in extrapolating from Boston Naming Test item gradation construct.
abstract: The Boston Naming Test (BNT) was designed to present items in order of difficulty based on word frequency. Changes in word frequencies over time, however, would frustrate extrapolation in clinical and research settings based on the theoretical construct because performance on the BNT might reflect changes in ecological frequency of the test items, rather than performance across items of increasing difficulty. This study identifies the ecological frequency of BNT items at the time of publication using the American Heritage Word Frequency Book and determines changes in frequency over time based on the frequency distribution of BNT items across a current corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Findings reveal an uneven distribution of BNT items across 2 corpora and instances of negligible differentiation in relative word frequency across test items. As BNT items are not presented in order from least to most frequent, clinicians and researchers should exercise caution in relying on the BNT as presenting items in increasing order of difficulty. A method is proposed for distributing confrontation-naming items to be explicitly measured against test items that are normally distributed across the corpus of a given language.
authors.affiliation: a Psychology, John Jay College and the Graduate Center , City University of New York , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Beattey
authors.affiliation: b Neurology and Psychiatry , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Hilary
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.affiliation: b Neurology and Psychiatry , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Melinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cornwell
authors.affiliation: c New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Braun
authors.affiliation: b Neurology and Psychiatry , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Stein
authors.affiliation: b Neurology and Psychiatry , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goldstein
authors.affiliation: b Neurology and Psychiatry , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Heidi Allison
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Bender
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009275:Names; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Aphasia; Boston Naming Test; confrontation naming; word frequency