Abstract:
As of 2014 there are no assessments of language function available in the Samoan language. This is of concern as a large proportion of the Samoan population is susceptible to stroke (Anderson et al., 2005) and approximately 30% of stroke sufferers are estimated to suffer from some form of language disability or aphasia (Kauhanen et al., 2000; Engelter et al., 2006; Dickey et al., 2010). This study outlines the development of the first language assessment tool in the Samoan language; the Samoan adaptation of the Boston Naming Test (S-BNT). This study also investigates the performance of Samoan-English bilinguals on the Boston Naming Test (BNT; Kaplan, Goodglass & Weintraub, 1983) and the newly developed S-BNT. Eighty Samoan-English bilinguals residing in New Zealand participated in this study. As hypothesised, Samoan-English bilinguals performed significantly poorer than American (Zec, Burkett, Markwell & Larsen, 2011) and New Zealand (Barker-Collo, 2001; 2007) monolingual norms. Performance in the S-BNT was comparable to BNT performance. The theoretical construct of the BNT and S-BNT was tested with this population. Evidence was found in support of the use of the BNT and S-BNT as appropriate and valid assessments of language function in Samoan-English bilinguals. Future research should aim to re-standardise the BNT and S-BNT for clinical use with healthy and linguistically impaired Samoan-English bilinguals. This will ultimately lead to an improvement in assessing and treating Samoan-English bilinguals affected by aphasia.
