NAMING PERFORMANCE OF BRAIN-INJURED CHILDREN

The naming performance of three groups of children who had experienced brain injury, children with a severe closed-head injury, children tre ated for posterior fossa tumour, and children treated for acute lympho blastic leukaemia was compared to a matched control group. Only the ch ildren who had experienced a closed-head injury demonstrated significa nt impairment on the confrontation-naming task; however, all groups pe rformed more poorly than the control group on a word-association task. Results are considered in light of the mechanisms of brain injury inv olved in each experimental group. In addition, naming tasks are consid ered in terms of their utility in characterizing the language skills o f children with brain injury and in terms of the task demands each req uires to allow adequate performance.