Auditory and visual naming tests: normative and patient data for accuracy, response time, and tip-of-the-tongue

Naming is typically assessed with visual naming tasks, yet, some patients with genuine word-finding difficulty (evident in auditorily based discourse) show minimal difficulty on such measures. Evidence from cortical mapping, brain imaging and neuropsychological studies suggests that auditory naming measures might provide more relevant or at least, complementary information. We developed comparable auditory and visual naming tests and present normative data for accuracy, response time, and tip-of-the-tongue responses based on 100 controls. Test validity was supported by findings that left temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients (i.e., a population with expected naming difficulty) performed more poorly on auditory but not visual naming compared to right TLE patients (i.e., a population without expected naming difficulty). Internal and test-retest reliability coefficients were reasonable. Finally, test utility was assessed on an individual basis, and auditory but not visual naming performance predicted impairment.