Development of an adapted version of the Boston Naming Test for Portuguese speakers

Abstract

Objective: To present the development of an adapted version of the Boston Naming Test for Portuguese speakers, and to investigate the effects of age, education and gender on both the original and the adapted Boston Naming Test in respect of Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

Method: Eighty items, including the 60 original ones and 20 adapted items were administered to 739 healthy Brazilian subjects aged between 6 and 77 years who received 0 to 17 years of education.

Results: The coefficients of the General Linear Model estimation suggested that both age and education were statistically significant to predict total scores. In addition, score variances, justified by such predictors, were 41.20% in the original Boston Naming Test against 25.84% in the adapted Boston Naming Test. These results suggest that the scores from the original BNT are more dependent on age and education than those from the adapted Boston Naming Test.

Conclusion: These findings demonstrated the suitability of the adapted Boston Naming Test version for the Brazilian population and described provisional norms for the original and adapted Boston Naming Test for Portuguese speakers.