Abstracts

Rationale: Auditory naming (AN) and complementary visual naming (VN) tests have proven clinically useful in the presurgical work-up of adults with epilepsy. However, these tests are available only in English, which compromises assessment and language mapping for many native Spanish-speaking epilepsy patients. Assessment of VN in Spanish speakers is typically assessed with the 30-item Pontón-Satz Boston Naming Test (PS-BNT), however, this measure is of questionable validity due to vocabulary confounds and inclusion of culturally unfamiliar items. There are currently no Spanish measures of auditory naming. To address this clinical need, we developed linguistically and culturally-relevant naming measures suitable for use with native Spanish-speakers with epilepsy.Methods: Participants were 35 healthy native Spanish-speaking adults (Mage = 35.8 years, SD = 9.5; Medu = 12.7, SD = 4.4) and 9 unilateral epilepsy patients (4 left: Mage = 48.8, SD= 11.7; Medu = 11.6, SD= 1.9; 5 right: Mage = 39.2, SD = 15.8; Medu = 12.0, SD = 1.9). Performance measures included: Accuracy (% correct), response time (RT) and tip-of-tongue errors (TOT; i.e., correct responses > 2 seconds or correct following a phonemic cue). The AN Test consisted of 30 descriptions and the VN Test consisted of 37 visual items.Results: Accuracy on the Auditory and Visual Naming tests was near ceiling levels (Table 1), verifying that the target items were familiar to most participants. Pearson correlations with Bonferroni correction were significant between auditory naming test performance and education (r = .41, p = .05) and vocabulary (r = .73, p = .01). In contrast, there were no significant correlations with visual naming measures and education or vocabulary. Control participants consistently performed better on the AN and VN tests (92-100% accuracy on the VNT and 90-100% on the ANT) compared with 47-90% on the PS-BNT (p=.000). PS-BNT scores correlated significantly with vocabulary (r = .41, p = .05). Nine healthy controls had repeat testing. Test retest analysis showed no significant practice effects. In the small sample of epilepsy patients, preliminary results suggested that left hemisphere epilepsy patients performed more poorly than right hemisphere epilepsy patients on both AN and VN tests (Table 1).Conclusions: These findings are significant because they represent the first step toward the availability of valid, culturally appropriate, standardized measures of auditory and visual naming for native Spanish-speakers with epilepsy. Preliminary findings from the small patient sample promise improved presurgical assessment of naming for Spanish-speaking epilepsy patients. The current study was funded by The Epilepsy Foundation of America (Behavioral Sciences Post-doctoral Fellowship)