Background: Finding the right word is a necessity in communication, and its evaluation has always been a challenging clinical issue, suggesting the need for valid and reliable measurements. The Homophone Meaning Generation Test (HMGT) can measure the ability to switch between verbal concepts, which is required in word retrieval. The purpose of this study was to adapt and validate the Persian version of the HMGT.
Methods: The first phase involved the adaptation of the HMGT to the Persian language. The second phase concerned the psychometric testing. The word-finding performance was assessed in 90 Persian-speaking healthy individuals (20-50 year old; 45 males and 45 females) through three naming tasks: Semantic Fluency, Phonemic Fluency, and Homophone Meaning Generation Test. The participants had no history of neurological or psychiatric diseases, alcohol abuse, severe depression, or history of speech, language, or learning problems.
Results: The internal consistency coefficient was larger than 0.8 for all the items with a total Cronbach's alpha of 0.80. Interrater and intrarater reliability were also excellent. The validity of all items was above 0.77, and the content validity index (0.99) was appropriate. The Persian HMGT had strong convergent validity with semantic and phonemic switching and adequate divergent validity with semantic and phonemic clustering.
Conclusion: The Persian version of the Homophone Meaning Generation Test is an appropriate, valid, and reliable test to evaluate the ability to switch between verbal concepts in the assessment of word-finding performance.
Keywords: Homophone Meaning Generation Test; Language; Naming; Neuropsychological Assessment; Verbal Fluency.