Phonological and semantic contributions to children's picture naming skill: Evidence from children with developmental reading disorders

Abstract

This experiment investigated the picture naming skills of dyslexic children, poor comprehenders and children with normally developing reading skills, using pictures whose names varied in word length and word frequency. Relative to young children reading at the same level, dyslexic children were less accurate at naming pictures that have long names, and they made a disproportionate number of phonological errors. In contrast, poor comprehenders showed normal effects of length but were slower and less accurate at naming pictures than control children, and in particular, they were poor at naming pictures that have low frequency names. These ndings are discussed within a framework in which picture naming ef ciency is related to underlying language skills in both the phonological and semantic domains.A substantial body of research documents the picture naming dif culties that many language or reading-impaired children experience (for example,

Semantic Abilities in Children With Pragmatic Language Impairment: The Case of Picture Naming Skills

“…The effect of word length has mainly been established in children with dyslexia. For example, Swan and Goswami (1997) reported on a word length effect for dyslexic children, with no word length effects for any of the children in the control groups; Nation et al (2001) reported on similar results in their dyslexic sample. The effect of word frequency and word length has not been investigated in children with PLI.…”

“…As such, strong frequency effects can serve as an indicator of a semantic deficit or of the influence of a reduced vocabulary. In contrast, sensitivity to word length can be seen in light of phonological deficits, as longer words place a higher demand on long-term memory (Nation et al, 2001). As to the differential effect of word frequency by disorder, conflicting results have been found (Dockrell et al, 2001).…”

“…Some researchers have suggested that word frequency has an effect on the way the word is represented in the mental lexicon (Nation et al, 2001). High-frequency words will be represented better than low-frequency words, simply because a child will encounter the low-frequency words to a lesser extent.…”

“…Picture naming skills have been researched extensively in the case of children with language disorders (Bello, Capirci, & Volterra, 2004;Dockrell, Messer, & George, 2001;Lahey & Edwards, 1999;Nation et al, 2001;Swan & Goswami, 1997). The pattern of naming errors differs by the type of language problem.…”

“…Problems during name selection may also be the result of sparse semantic representation, but they may also be caused by lexical retrieval problems (word-finding difficulties). Problems during the final stage are generally caused by phonological difficulties (Nation, Marshall, & Snowling, 2001). When applying a picture naming task, analysis of only naming accuracy is usually not sufficient to determine the exact nature of the problems experienced by the participants.…”