The Homophone Meaning Generation Test: Psychometric properties and a method for estimating premorbid performance

Abstract

The Homophone Meaning Generation Test (HMGT; Warrington, 2000) is a new measure of verbal fluency that has been demonstrated to be sensitive to the presence of anterior lesions. In the present study we used the HMGT healthy standardization sample (N 5 170) and demonstrate that scores on the HMGT do not differ significantly from a normal distribution and that the test has adequate reliability (a 5 .82). A table for obtaining confidence limits on an individual's score is presented. A regression equation for the estimation of premorbid HMGT performance was constructed using the National Adult Reading Test as the predictor variable. In a sample of 36 cases with anterior lesions estimated premorbid scores were significantly higher than obtained scores ( p , .001). Premorbid ability acted to suppress group differences on the HMGT; the partial correlation between neurological status (healthy vs. anterior lesion) and HMGT performance controlling for premorbid ability (.53) was significantly higher than the raw correlation (.44). In addition, hierarchical discriminant function analysis demonstrated that the inclusion of premorbid ability improved classification over that achieved by HMGT scores alone. These results support both the underlying rationale and the clinical utility of controlling for premorbid performance when interpreting verbal fluency scores. (JINS, 2002, 8, 547-554.)

Psychometric Foundations of Neuropsychological Assessment

“…The inclusion of the NART significantly improved the accuracy of classification over that achieved by WAIS IQs alone; 85% of cases were correctly classified by IQ scores and this rose to 96% for the combination of IQs and NART scores. An analogous result was obtained by Crawford and Warrington (2002) who reported that the use of the NART significantly improved the ability of a verbal fluency task (homophone meaning generation) to discriminate between the performance of healthy participants and patients with focal anterior lesions.…”

“…NART performance appears to be largely resistant to the effects of many neurological and psychiatric disorder (e.g., depression, acute schizophrenia, alcoholic dementia, and Parkinson's disease (see Crawford, 1992;Franzen et al, 1997 for reviews;O'Carroll, 1995). The results for headinjury have generally been positive (e.g., Watt & O'Carroll, 1999) although there are indications of impaired performance in a minority of cases (Freeman et al, 2001); the available evidence also suggests that the NART "holds" following focal frontal lesions (Bright et al, 2002;Crawford & Warrington, 2002).…”

The National Adult Reading Test as a measure of premorbid intelligence: A comparison with estimates derived from demographic variables

“…There are surprisingly few studies that have specifically investigated the validity of the NART in frontal lesion patients. However, Crawford and Warrington (2002) have reported that the NART performance of an anterior lesion sample (N 5 36) did not differ significantly from controls (N 5 170).…”

How does the homophone meaning generation test associate with the phonemic and semantic fluency tests? A quantitative and qualitative analysis

“…On this task, participants are required to generate multiple meanings for each of a series of eight homophones : tick, tip, slip, form, plain, bored, right, and sent (Crawford & Warrington, 2002). It is assumed that performance on this task measures the ability to switch between alternative verbal concepts, and patients with anterior brain lesions have been found to be more impaired on the HMGT than patients with posterior lesions (Warrington, 2000).…”

“…Normal English speakers provide one to six distinct meanings for each homophone and can make up to five switches per target (see Table 1 in Crawford & Warrington, 2002). While different authors disagree as to whether homophones have one or many phonological representations (Caramazza et al, 2001(Caramazza et al, , 2004Jescheniak et al, 2003;Jescheniak & Levelt, 1994;Miozzo et al, 2004), it is agreed that every homophone must have multiple conceptual representations.…”