A Normative Study of the Boston Naming Test in 3- to 14-Year-Old Korean Children

Abstract

We administered the 60-item Korean version of the Boston Naming Test (K-BNT) to 2560 normally developing Korean children aged between 3 and 14 years. The children were stratified into 24 groups between the ages of 3 years, 0 months (3;0) and 14 years, 11 months (14;11) with 6-month intervals between each group. Statistical analysis did not reveal gender differences, but there were significant age differences among the groups (F = 615.340, p = .000). The lowest score (M = 14.17, SD = 4.28) was observed in the 3;0 ∼ 3;5 age-group and the highest (M = 50.64, SD = 3.70) in the 14;6 ∼ 14;11. Simple linear regression analysis revealed an R² value of .800, indicating that the age variable explains 80% of the score variance (F = 10228.343, p = .000). Some of the 24 age groups were clustered due to lack of difference of the test scores between the neighboring groups, reducing the number of age groups to 13. This large cross-sectional study provided clinically useful norms of the BNT on Korean children and confirmed an importance of the age parameter in a neuropsychological testing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2004-003-B00240) funded by the Korean Government awarded to the first author H. Kim.

We would like to mention our deep gratitude to a vast number of children and their parents as well as teachers who have provided us with their valuable time and effort to accomplish this study. We are also indebted to our colleagues, professors Hyun-Gi Kim (Chonbuk University), Ok-Ran Jeong (Daegu University), Bo-Myung Hwang (Kaya University), Soo-Jin Kim (Korea Nazarene University), and So-Yeong Pae (Hallym University), and their students, for their support during the data collection. Last but not least, we owe the successful completion of this study to the teamwork of our enthusiastic and dedicated students at the Graduate Program in Speech and Language Pathology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

Notes

^a denotes the age group between 0 and 5 months at the designated age.

^b denotes the age group between 6 and 11 months at the designated age.

^c includes Incheon area.

^d includes Daejeon area.

^e includes Daegu, Busan, & Ulsan areas.

^f includes Gwangju area.

^a ‘a’ denotes the age group between 0 and 5 months at the designated age.

^b ‘b’ denotes the age group between 6 and 11 months at the designated age.

(a) Predictors: (Constant), Age. (b) Dependent variable: Score.

^a denotes the age group between 0 and 5 months at the designated age.

^b denotes the age group between 6 and 11 months at the designated age.

*p < .05.

^a denotes the age group between 0 and 5 months at the designated age.

^b denotes the age group between 6 and 11 months at the designated age.

^a This was taken from the research on the age-group of 15 years and older Korean population (Kim & Na, 1999).