Bilingualism, Object Familiarity, and Performance of Indonesian Boston Naming Test (I-BNT) among Balinese

Abstract. Study of cross-cultural neuropsychological assessment is consequential to ensure the fairness of the assessment and to improve accuracy of the adapted neuropsychological assessment tools. Several studies indicate the effect of language proficiency and familiarity stimuli of neuropsychological assessment tests as factors that contribute to the error of measurements. These issues should be well understood by researchers and practicing psychologists in multilingual societies,  including among Balinese (Indonesia). This research aims to investigate the effect of bilingualism and familiarity of stimuli of the adapted Indonesian Boston Naming Test (I-BNT) among Balinese that commonly speak Bahasa Bali as their frequent language. Hypotheses of this study are: 1) familiarity of the I-BNT stimuli correlates positively with I-BNT performance; 2) familiarity of the stimuli correlates negatively with response time in I-BNT; 3) people who speak Bahasa Bali show lower score than people who speak Bahasa Indonesia in I-BNT performance; and 4) people who live in rural areas show lower scores than people who live in urban areas in I-BNT performance. Instruments used in this study are the adapted I-BNT, familiarity test, and bilingualism index questionnaire. Data analysis will use Pearson Product Moment (treating familiarity score and I-BNT performance and response time as interval and ratio variable) and One-Way MANOVAs (treating bilingualism, living areas, and testing order as categorical variables aside I-BNT performance as interval variable). 

Keywords: Boston Naming Test, bilingualism, cross-cultural neuropsychology, language test, indonesia