Rapid naming by children with and without specific language impairment

Purpose: Previous studies have reported that children with specific language impairment (SLI) name pictures more slowly than do chronological age-matched (CAM) peers. Rapid naming depends on 2 factors known to be problematic for children with SLI-lexical retrieval and nonlinguistic speed of processing. Although all studies implicate a speed-of-processing deficit as a contributing factor, researchers do not agree on the influence of language factors. The purpose of the current study was to explore word frequency (WF) and phonotactic pattern frequency (PPF) as potential lexical factors contributing to the naming deficits experienced by children with SLI.

Method: Three groups of children-20 children with SLI (Mage = 9;8 [years;months]), 20 younger vocabulary-matched (VM) controls, and 20 CAM controls-named pictures whose labels varied by WF and PPF.

Results: Reaction time results revealed significant main effects of group (CAM < SLI = VM) and WF (high WF < low WF). Effects due to WF were comparable for all groups, but a significant Group × PPF interaction revealed that PPF effects were greater for children with SLI than for VM or CAM children.

Conclusion: Results replicate previous findings of a naming deficit in children with SLI. Furthermore, results suggest that children with SLI are more vulnerable to increased competition from words with frequent phonotactic patterns, which also come from dense phonological neighborhoods.