Word Naming Speed In Specific Language Impairment Children

Abstract

RAN is considered to be as one of the universal processes that predict the young child’s later ability to connect and automatize whole sequences of letters and words with their linguistic information, regardless of writing system. There are several theories that explain why rapid automatized naming is associated with reading disabilities. One suggestion is that they both exploit the speed with which phonological representations are retrieved from long term memory. Another related theory is that both depend on the variations in the rate of development of a general cognitive speed of information processing. Early studies about lexical access in children with SLI indicated that discrete naming, compared to that of age-matched peers, was slower, contained more errors and involved naming difficulties and this may be due to semantic representation deficit or phonological representation deficit or storing and retrieval deficit. There is strong evidence that suggests dyslexia is a language based disability. The syntactic deficit that is found to be a hallmark of SLI could play a role in causing reading problems. The syntactic or semantic deficits present in children with reading disability are commonly regarded as secondary consequences of phonological impairment. Therefore dyslexia is more common in children with SLI. The dyslexic children also have naming problems and there are different suggestions about the mechanisms responsible for the lexical access in these children (a) inadequate phonological representations in the lexicon that result in children having difficulty identifying the appropriate phonological form (b) slower speed of response, however, this account is less satisfactory in explaining the presence of naming errors. The aim of this work was to study word naming speed in children with specific language impairment in comparison to children with normal language development; an ability that may predict their future reading skill, in order to help early management of such deficit, if present. The study was performed on 60 children with an age range of 2 – 5 yrs. They were divided into two groups: 1- Study group: children diagnosed as specific language impairment (SLI) (number = 30) with an age range of 3-5 years. 2- Control group: normal children (number=30) divided into 3 subgroups with age range 2-3 yrs, 3-4 yrs, 4-5 yrs, consecutively. • Each group consisted of 10 children. • Children were subjected to word naming speed test. It consists of 30 pictures divided into 3 levels of graduated difficulty. The response time and number of errors for each level was recorded as well as the total response time. The study revealed that SLI children aged (3-5 yrs) were slower than age matched peers of normal children in rapid automatized naming tasks. Their results were nearly comparable with the younger age group (2-3 yrs) of the normal children. The response time and the number of errors decreased with age in both normal and SLI children. However, the correlation with age was higher in normal children than the SLI children.