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Published on: June 25, 2019
A culturally grounded Arabic naming task differentiates Saudi Arabic-speaking adults with post-stroke aphasia from
Maha Aldera1, Mohammed AlHarbi2, Abrar Alduraibi3
1Department of Health Communication Sciences, College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Background/Objectives:
Anomia is a common linguistic consequence of post-stroke aphasia. Widely used confrontation-naming measures were developed primarily in English-speaking populations, and item familiarity may not transfer to Arabic speakers. We developed the Arabic Naming Test (ANT) as a culturally grounded picture-naming task and examined its preliminary clinical feasibility in Saudi Arabic-speaking adults.
Methods:
In this cross-sectional convenience-sample study, 75 neurotypical native Arabic-speaking adults and 30 adults with post-stroke aphasia completed a 90-item picture-confrontation naming task. Accuracy and response latency were recorded; participants with aphasia also completed a sequential semantic-phonemic cueing protocol. Welch tests and age-adjusted sensitivity analyses compared groups.
Results:
The aphasia group had lower ANT scores than neurotypical peers (M = 49.50, SD = 31.66 vs. M = 87.55, SD = 3.48; Welch's t(29.3) = -6.57, p < 0.001; Hedges' g = -2.21) and slower mean response latency per item (M = 1.80 s vs. M = 1.06 s; Welch's t(29.8) = 3.77, p < 0.001; Hedges' g = 1.24). These group differences remained statistically significant in age-adjusted sensitivity analyses. Sequential semantic-phonemic cueing analyses of 30 participants showed reductions in description, miscellaneous, no-response, and semantic errors after adjustment for multiple comparisons. On average, 17.17 items (SD = 18.46) were named correctly after phonemic cueing and 2.90 items (SD = 3.32) after semantic cueing alone.
Conclusion:
In this preliminary convenience sample, the ANT showed substantial known-groups differences between Saudi Arabic-speaking neurotypical adults and adults with post-stroke aphasia and generated descriptive cueing and error-profile observations. These findings support continued development of a culturally grounded Arabic naming measure; however, larger, demographically balanced multi-site studies are needed before formal reliability, psychometric validation, diagnostic accuracy, or clinically meaningful thresholds can be established.
