Construct and Concurrent Validity of the Spanish Adaptation of the Boston Naming Test

In 1996, a Spanish edition of the Boston Naming Test (BNT) was published. Changes to the original version were introduced but without an empirical foundation supporting these modifications. This version was later adapted by reordering the items according to their difficulty frequency in a Spanish-speaking population, and norms were developed from this version of the test. However, no validity studies were performed with this new version to determine if the changes introduced had an impact on the test's validity. The current study was performed to assess the construct and concurrent validity of the Spanish-language version of the BNT (SV-BNT). The SV-BNT was administered to 23 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 36 normal controls. Groups were matched by age and education. Patients with AD showed a significantly lower mean score than the controls on the SV-BNT with a large effect size, which demonstrates adequate construct validity. However, sensitivity was 39% and specificity was 89%. The very low sensitivity shows that the concurrent validity of the test is poor and many patients with AD can score within the normal range. The SV-BNT does not guarantee a proper identification of naming difficulties, and therefore, its clinical use should not be recommended.