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 to approximately 3;5 age-group and the highest (M = 50.64, SD = 3.70) in the 14;6 to approximately 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.