The MINT Sprint: Exploring a Fast Administration Procedure with an Expanded Multilingual Naming Test.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Bilingualism Research

Background:

• Assessing bilingual language proficiency and dominance is crucial for research and clinical practice.
• Traditional methods can be time-consuming, necessitating efficient alternatives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if a time-pressured Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) administration affects bilingual language proficiency and dominance assessment.
• To compare the MINT-Sprint with other measures for assessing language dominance.

Main Methods:

• Eighty Spanish-English bilinguals completed a 3-minute MINT-Sprint naming task in each language.
• Proficiency was also assessed via Oral Proficiency Interview, self-ratings, Woodcock-Muñoz subtests, and a speeded translation recognition test.
• Scores were analyzed at 2 minutes, after a first pass, and after a second pass with prompts for skipped items.

Main Results:

• The MINT Sprint highly correlated with Oral Proficiency Interview scores for predicting language dominance.
• Self-ratings were less effective, particularly for assessing the degree of language balance.
• Prompting for skipped items improved language dominance assessment, especially for the nondominant language.

Conclusions:

• Time-pressured rapid naming is an efficient method for assessing bilingual proficiency without significant compromise.
• Vocabulary breadth is important alongside retrieval speed for accurate proficiency assessment.