The Development of Scoring Criteria for a New Picture Naming Task
Objective: The purpose of the study was to develop a scoring system for a novel naming task suitable for assessing naming performance in younger (18-30 years) and older (65+ years) adults in monolingual English, monolingual French, and English-French bilingual groups. This novel naming task will serve as an important health service to help diagnose and assess cognitively impaired older individuals, while also serving as an educational tool for healthcare providers.Materials and Methods: The Naming Task consists of 120 images organized in the same randomized order, and are shown on a white background displayed on a computer screen using PowerPoint. Participants are instructed to name the image displayed. Monolinguals completed the test in their native language and bilinguals completed the test in English only, French only, and a bilingual administration. Scoring criteria was established based on the responses from testing.Results: Strict and lenient scoring criteria developed for the Naming Task are presented. Eight items were removed from the original Naming Task due to quality and/or clarity, inability to name the image, or too many alternate responses. Performance in monolingual English and French was similar in younger and older adults for strict and lenient scoring. Bilinguals performed better with bilingual administration and worse with French administration, where scores were the lowest of all age and language groups.Conclusion: The Naming Task appears to be suitable for monolingual French and English individuals. Results suggest that a bilingual administration should be used when testing English-French bilinguals.