A-100 Examining Spanish-English Bilingual Boston Naming Test Norms in Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors

Abstract

\n \n \n We examined two established Spanish-English bilingual norms to assess if traumatic brain injury (TBI) deficits were still found if language was no longer a variable influencing Boston Naming Test (BNT) performance.\n \n \n \n The sample consisted of 47 healthy comparison (HC; 24 English-Monolinguals; 23 Spanish-English Bilinguals), 33 acute TBI (ATBI; 20 English-Monolinguals; 13 Spanish-English Bilinguals), and 25 Chronic TBI (CTBI: 13 English-Monolinguals; 12 Spanish-English Bilinguals) participants. Raw scores and adjusted demographic T-scores (Roberts et\xa0al., 2002; Rosselli et\xa0al., 1997) were used to evaluate BNT performance.\n \n \n \n An ANCOVA controlling for age, revealed the HC group outperformed the TBI group on the BNT (raw score), p\u2009=\u20090.003, ηp2\u2009=\u20090.11. We also found monolinguals outperformed bilinguals on the BNT, p\u2009=\u20090.000, ηp2\u2009=\u20090.24. Using the Roberts et\xa0al., (2002) norms, we found the HC group outperformed the TBI group, p\u2009=\u20090.003, ηp2\u2009=\u20090.11, but no language differences were found. Next, using Rosselli et\xa0al., (1997) norms, we found the HC group outperformed the TBI group on the BNT, p\u2009=\u20090.003, ηp2\u2009=\u20090.11, and monolingual speakers outperformed bilingual speakers, p\u2009=\u20090.014, ηp2\u2009=\u20090.06. No interactions were found.\n \n \n \n As expected, the TBI group demonstrated worse BNT performance compared to HC group on both language norms. However, when using Roberts et\xa0al., (2002) Spanish-English bilingual norms, no language group differences were found. Our data indicates that when examining BNT performance in a Spanish-English bilingual and English-monolingual TBI sample, Roberts et\xa0al., (2002) normative data may be better suited to evaluate BNT deficits in a TBI while taking language into account.\n