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Performance of English, Zulu and Sotho students on the Boston Naming test : an investigation into the items responsible for cultural bias.

The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is a confrontation naming test which is used to measure naming ability. The primary purpose of this study was to identify whether cultural bias negatively affects South African’s performance on the Boston Naming Test (BNT). More specifically the study aimed to identify the exact items of the BNT on which South Africans perform poorly because of cultural bias. The research identified alternate responses given by respondents in terms of a percentage. The study further aimed to explore whether there was a significant difference in performance when comparing English, Zulu and Sotho respondents in terms of item response. This investigation also intended to discover whether being bilingual would affect South African’s performance on the BNT. Finally, the study aimed to explore whether there was a significant difference in the performance on the BNT when comparing male and female respondents. A significant difference was found between the South African and the Canadian sample in terms of item response. 40 items were revealed as problematic in a South African sample. Significant differences were found when comparing English respondents to Zulu respondents as well as when comparing Sotho respondents to English respondents. Although differences were found between male and female performance, the difference was not significant. Ultimately, no significant difference was found between monolingual and bilingual respondents.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/11440
Date15 March 2012
CreatorsMendonca, Juliana
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatapplication/pdf, application/pdf

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