Adaptations of the National Adult Reading Test (NART) for assessing
premorbid intelligence in languages other than English requires (a)
generating word-items that are rare and do not follow grapheme-to-phoneme
mappings common in that language, and (b) subsequent validation against a
cognitive battery normed on the population of interest. Such tests exist
for Italy, France, Spain, and Argentina, all normed against national
versions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Given the varieties of
Spanish spoken in the United States, the adaptation of the Spanish Word
Accentuation Test (WAT) requires re-validating the original word list,
plus possible new items, against a cognitive battery that has been normed
on Spanish-speakers from many countries. This study reports the generation
of 55 additional words and revalidation in a sample of 80 older,
Spanish-dominant immigrants. The Batería Woodcock-Muñoz
Revisada (BWM-R), normed on Spanish speakers from six countries and five
U.S. states, was used to establish criterion validity. The original WAT
word list accounted for 77% of the variance in the BWM-R and 58% of the
variance in Ravens Colored Progressive Matrices, suggesting that the
unmodified list possesses adequate predictive validity as an indicator of
intelligence. Regression equations are provided for estimating BWM-R and
Ravens scores from WAT scores. (JINS, 2006, 12,
391–399.)