About the Boston Naming Test
The Boston Naming Test (1983) was developed at the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital by Edith Kaplan, Harold Goodglass, and Sandra Weintraub as part of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. The standalone 60-item test became the standard worldwide measure of confrontation naming.
Items are line drawings arranged by increasing rarity/difficulty: easy items (bed, tree, pencil), moderate items (volcano, beaver, abacus), and difficult items (sphinx, trellis, palette, abacus). Subjects have 20 seconds to name each item; correct naming = 1 point, total = 0-60. If the subject fails to name, the examiner provides a semantic cue ("you sleep in it"); if still incorrect, a phonemic cue ("it starts with B").
BNT is the standard naming test in aphasiology and Alzheimer's research. Anomia (word-finding difficulty) is one of the earliest cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer's, often present 5-10 years before formal dementia diagnosis. BNT performance discriminates aphasia subtypes (Broca's vs Wernicke's vs Anomic) and tracks disease progression in Alzheimer's and primary progressive aphasia.
The subtest
What the test looks like
The Boston Naming Test (BNT) uses a stimulus book of 60 line drawings of objects arranged in approximate order of difficulty - from very common everyday objects (bed, tree, pencil) to progressively rarer items (volcano, beaver, abacus, sphinx, trellis, palette).
Administration: The examiner shows each picture in turn. The test-taker has 20 seconds to name it. If the test-taker says the correct name within 20 seconds, they receive 1 point.
If they fail to respond or give an incorrect name: The examiner can provide a semantic cue ("you sleep in it" for bed). If still wrong, the examiner provides a phonemic cue ("it starts with B"). Cued correct responses are scored separately from spontaneous responses but are clinically informative.
Discontinuation: Most adult administrations have a "discontinue after 8 consecutive wrong" rule. Children typically start at an easier item determined by age.
Scoring: Total correct spontaneous responses (out of 60) is the primary score. Norms exist by age, education, and language. Performance below 1 standard deviation suggests anomia (word-finding difficulty) which is sensitive to aphasia, Alzheimer's, and other conditions affecting word retrieval.
The 60 stimulus pictures are copyrighted (Pearson). The test cannot be administered without the official stimulus book. Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) is a research alternative with free distribution to researchers.
Source
All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:
Kaplan, E., Goodglass, H., & Weintraub, S. (1983). Boston Naming Test. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger.
BNT is published by Pearson (acquired Lea & Febiger's assessment division). Current edition BNT-2 (2001, 60 items) or BNT-2 Short Form (15 items). All copyrighted.
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