Samoan-English Bilingual Performance on the Boston Naming Test and its Samoan Adaptation

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.