Word‐finding difficulties in French‐speaking children with SLI: a case STUDY

Abstract

This study presents the case of a 9-year-old boy, Jeoffrey, with word-finding difficulties. In an attempt to investigate the cause(s) of these difficulties, an in-depth evaluation of his semantic and phonological skills was carried out, in which lexical and phonological variables such as age of acquisition or phonological complexity were controlled. Jeoffrey's performance was compared to a child matched for age. Although Jeoffrey showed no apparent phonological deficit, our results revealed deficits in semantic processes. We argue that this boy's word-finding difficulties are the result of imprecise and unspecified semantic representations. Therefore, as this case demonstrates, it is essential to determine the origin(s) of children's word-finding difficulties, which could be different and specific for each child presenting such a lexical deficit.

Word-Finding Intervention for Children With Specific Language Impairment: A Multiple Single-Case Study

“…Single case studies lend themselves to investigating this interaction between weak phonological representations and semantic deficits because of its capacity to explore the individual responses (Bragard & Schelstraete, 2007;Bragard, Schelstraete, & Lefèvre, submitted).…”

Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues

“…Due to constrained or reduced activation spread, naming difficulties can arise ( Foygel and Dell, 2000 ; Indefrey, 2011 ). Naming difficulties occur for patients with aphasia and for children with speech specific language impairments (SLI; Brackenbury and Pye, 2005 ; aphasia: Bragard and Schelstraete, 2007 ; Meteyard and Bose, 2018 ). The different levels within the mental lexicon correspond to different underlying causes of naming difficulties in SLI, as summarized by Best (2005) .…”