Australian Items and Normative Data for Australian Children on the Boston Naming Test

Abstract

The Boston Naming Test has several items which reflect the American origins of the test (e.g. “beaver”, “pretzel”). The purpose of this study was to establish normative data and provide lexical error analysis data for the use of the Boston Naming Test with the Australian paediatric population. A further aim was to develop alternative items for those items which have a higher frequency in the American culture. Three hundred and fifty primary school students (5;5 years–13;1 years) participated in the study. Means, standard deviations and ranges were established for both the original version and an Australian version of the Boston Naming Test. The lexical error analysis revealed that older children in grades 6 and 7 made more circumlocutions and empty syntax errors than younger children in grades 1 and 2. In contrast, younger children made more “don't know ”, perceptual and semantic similarity errors. Comparison of the Australian and American normative data suggested that the performance of Australian childr...