Familiarity norms for the Boston Naming Test stimuli

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is a widely used tool for assessing confrontation naming abilities.
• Normative data for BNT stimuli regarding familiarity is lacking.
• Understanding factors influencing BNT performance is crucial for accurate assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide normative familiarity ratings for BNT pictorial stimuli.
• To investigate the relationship between BNT picture familiarity, word frequency, and lexical decision performance in young and elderly adults.
• To explore the role of processing speed in BNT performance.

Main Methods:

• Collected familiarity ratings for 60 BNT pictorial stimuli from 49 young and 30 elderly adults.
• Administered speeded lexical decision tasks on the word representations of BNT stimuli.
• Analyzed the relationship between BNT familiarity, word frequency, and reaction times.

Main Results:

• Established the first normative familiarity data for BNT stimuli across age groups.
• Found a negative correlation between lexical decision reaction times and both word frequency and picture familiarity for all participants.
• Demonstrated that increased word frequency and picture familiarity facilitate faster processing of BNT word representations.

Conclusions:

• Picture familiarity and word frequency significantly impact the processing speed of BNT word stimuli.
• Processing speed is an important factor in BNT performance, even in healthy young and elderly adults.
• The findings provide valuable insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying naming tasks.