McGregor K K
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1997 Dec;40(6):1232-44. doi: 10.1044/jslhr.4006.1232.
Twelve preschoolers with word-finding deficits (WF) and their age-matched normally developing (ND) peers participated in three tasks requiring word finding: the noun-naming and verb-naming subtests of the Test of Word Finding (TWF-N, TWF-V) and story retelling. The general error profiles of the two subject groups were similar. Semantic errors were always more common than phonological errors and were typically more common than unrelated errors (e.g., "I don't know" responses). The difference in proportions of semantic and phonological substitutions constitutes developmental evidence for lemma and lexeme distinctions as proposed in adult-based models of lexical storage. Furthermore, the predominance of errors that bore semantic relations to their targets produced by both ND and WF groups suggests an early and robust organization of lexical storage into a network of related information. Despite similarities between the two subject groups, the word-finding deficits of the WF group were manifested in two ways. First, compared to the ND group, the WF group demonstrated significantly higher rates of naming errors on all three tasks; second, they demonstrated significantly different proportions of error types on two of the three tasks. Specifically, the WF group produced a lower proportion of related errors on the TWF-V and a lower proportion of semantic errors on the story-retell task. One clinical implication of these findings concerns measurement of treatment outcomes. A reduction in the number of errors as well as a shift in the error profile towards higher proportions of related errors, especially semantic errors, may indicate progress in word-finding development.
12名有找词困难（WF）的学龄前儿童及其年龄匹配的正常发育（ND）同龄人参与了三项找词任务：找词测试（TWF）的名词命名和动词命名子测试（TWF-N、TWF-V）以及故事复述。两个受试组的总体错误模式相似。语义错误总是比语音错误更常见，并且通常比无关错误（例如“我不知道”回答）更常见。语义和语音替换比例的差异构成了基于成人词汇存储模型中提出的词元和词位区分的发展证据。此外，ND组和WF组产生的与目标具有语义关系的错误占主导地位，这表明词汇存储早期就牢固地组织成一个相关信息网络。尽管两个受试组之间存在相似之处，但WF组的找词困难以两种方式表现出来。首先，与ND组相比，WF组在所有三项任务上的命名错误率显著更高；其次，他们在三项任务中的两项任务上表现出错误类型的比例显著不同。具体而言，WF组在TWF-V上产生的相关错误比例较低，在故事复述任务上产生语义错误的比例较低。这些发现的一个临床意义涉及治疗效果的测量。错误数量的减少以及错误模式向更高比例的相关错误（尤其是语义错误）的转变可能表明找词发展取得了进展。
