Parallel Short Forms for the Korean-Boston Naming Test (K-BNT)

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The Korean-Boston Naming Test (K-BNT) is a popular measure of the confrontational naming ability. It is particularly sensitive to the early cognitive changes in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Vascular dementia (VaD). The current study was conducted to develop parallel short forms for the K-BNT used in repeated assessments as well as in situations where the administration of the complete K-BNT is not practical. METHODS: Four 15-item short forms were newly constructed based on the item difficulties of the K-BNT measured from 565 normal elderly aged over 55. The K-BNT was administered to 130 dementia patients (75 AD, 55 VaD) and 130 healthy community-dwelling elderly whose age, sex, and education level were matched with the dementia patients. Scores for the short forms were derived by dividing up the items of the K-BNT. RESULTS: On each short form, normal elderly performed better than dementia patients, and scores on each could be extrapolated to a complete 60-item K-BNT score. Significant correlations were found between short forms and the K-BNT. To compare the probabilities of correctly identifying dementia, the areas under Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves of each form and the K-BNT were compared. It was found that all the short forms were as efficient as the 60-item K-BNT in identifying dementia. CONCLUSIONS: These results confirm that the four 15-item short forms developed in the current study are parallel and valid as the short forms of the K-BNT.