This retrospective, exploratory investigation examined the types of target words that 30 children with word-finding difficulties (aged 8 to 12 years) had difficulty naming and the types of errors they made on these words. Words were studied with reference to lexical factors that might influence naming performance: word frequency, age of acquisition, familiarity, and lexical neighborhood. Findings indicated that neighborhood density predicted word-finding success, and target word substitutions and error patterns manifested were affected by the lexical factors under study. Students tended to produce substitutions that were higher in frequency, learned earlier, and that resided in neighborhoods of greater density and higher frequency than the target word. Lexical factors also influenced children's error patterns. Neighborhood density predicted form-related errors: Children produced more blocked errors on words from sparse neighborhoods. Word frequency and neighborhood frequency predicted form-segment-related errors as phonologic errors occurred on rare words and words whose neighbors contained lower frequency, uncommon phonological patterns. This important first step in the examination of how lexical factors have an impact on word-finding errors in children suggests that different types of words are more likely to result in failures of lexical access at different stages of processing. Theoretical and practical implications of these preliminary findings are discussed.

This investigation studied the influence of lexical factors, known to impact lexical access in adults, on the word retrieval of children. Participants included 320 typical and atypical (word-finding difficulties) language-learning children, ranging in age from 7 to 12 years. Lexical factors examined included word frequency, age-of-acquisition, neighborhood density, neighborhood frequency, and stress pattern. Findings indicated that these factors did influence lexical access in children. Words which were high in frequency and neighborhood frequency, low in neighborhood density and age-of-acquisition, and which contained the typical stress pattern for the language were easier to name. Further, the number of neighbors that were more frequent than the target word also had an effect on the word's ease of retrieval. Significant interactions indicated that age-of-acquisition effects decreased with maturation for typically-learning children whereas these effects continued to impact the lexical access of children with word-finding difficulties across the ages studied, suggesting that these children's difficulties in accessing words may have prevented them from developing strong access paths to these words. These findings support a view of lexical access in which access paths to words become strengthened with successful use.

This study investigated how lexical access in naming tasks (picture naming, naming to open-ended sentences, and naming to category exemplars) might be influenced by different lexical factors during adolescence and adulthood. Participants included 1075 individuals, ranging in age from 12 to 83 years. Lexical factors examined included word frequency and familiarity, age of acquisition, neighborhood density, and phonotactic probability. As expected, each of these factors influenced lexical access, and there was a general trend towards less accurate naming with age. More interestingly, word frequency and neighborhood density both showed larger effects for adolescents than for adults, but then showed constant effects on lexical access throughout adulthood. Phonotactic probability showed constant effects across the lifespan. Effects of word familiarity and age of acquisition interacted with age in adulthood; lexical access of older adults was more greatly affected by a word's familiarity and age of acquisition than was the lexical access of younger adults. These lexical factors impact on adult naming so that words that were learned later in life and which are judged to be less familiar are more difficult to retrieve then their counterparts (words learned earlier and judged to be more familiar) as individuals age. This suggests that age of acquisition and familiarity may play a protective role in adult naming. In contrast, word frequency and form-based properties of words appear to have similar effects throughout adulthood. Implications of these findings for theories of aging and for models of lexical access are discussed.

This investigation analyzed children’s word-finding skills in discourse. The subjects, 16 children with word-finding problems and 16 normal children in Grades 1–6, were matched for sex, age, grade, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic region, and receptive language. Subjects’ narratives, produced in response to three pictures and five probes, were tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with respect to the following word-finding indices: language productivity and the incidence of word-finding characteristics (repetitions, reformulations, substitutions, delays, empty words, time fillers, and insertions). Group comparisons were made with respect to these indices. Children with word-finding disorders did not differ from normal children in language productivity but manifested significantly more word-finding characteristics in their narratives. These findings are discussed with respect to characteristics and assessment of and intervention for children with word-finding disorders in discourse.

This study reports the effectiveness of a three-pronged (segmentation, phonological neighbor cues, and rehearsal) phonologically based strategy designed to reduce the word-finding errors of two third-grade students. A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across participants was employed. The results indicated an improvement in word finding (reduction in naming errors) in single-word contexts that was generalized to sentences and maintained during follow-up maintenance sessions. Furthermore, a self-assessment showed increased confidence in the ability to retrieve treatment words that was not so indicated for nontreatment words. Implications of these findings for both understanding the source of word-finding disruptions and their amelioration are discussed.