Cassidy Bertagnoli and Jena Burton, “Norms for Image Naming in Adults 50 years and Older”
Mentor: Sabine Heuer, Communication Sciences & Disorders
Poster #24

The decline in word-finding skills in older adults is well documented. Word finding is commonly assessed with image naming tasks. Therefore, norms for image naming in older adults are important in order to define what constitutes a normal performance at age 60, 70 or 80, but also to refine markers for impaired word finding which is a hallmark feature of several neurological disorders common in older adults such as dementia and aphasia. To date, norms for image naming are predominantly available for young adults. The purpose of this study is to provide image-naming norms for older adults free of neurologic impairments. To date, 23 participants have been recruited. All are native speakers of English, at least 50 years old, and are self-reportedly free of neurologic deficits. Each participant was presented with 600 photographs of common objects derived from the Bank of Standardized stimuli (BOSS, Brodeur et al., 2014) on a computer screen and was asked to name each image as quickly and accurately as possible. Accuracy and response times were recorded and analyzed using custom software and the software program Audacity. Mean naming accuracy across participants was 84.49%. The analysis for name agreement and the modal name of the 13,800 individual naming trials is in progress. We will report naming accuracy, name agreement and modal name. Our long-term goal is to recruit a total of 80 participants between the ages of 50-80. For the complete data set, we plan to analyze data for age groups to characterize changes in naming abilities with increase in age. Image naming performance is commonly studied in people with and without neurological deficits. Norms across the age range for image naming are a critical prerequisite for behavioral research that tackles theoretical as well as clinical questions.