Phonological and semantic contributions to children's picture naming skill: Evidence from children with developmental reading disorders

This experiment investigated the picture naming skills of dyslexic children , poor comprehenders and children with normally developing reading skills, using pictures whose names varied in word length and word frequency. Relati ve to young children reading at the same level, dyslexic children were less accurate at naming pictures that have long names, and they made a dispropo rtionate number of phonological errors. In contrast, poor comprehenders sho wed normal effects of length but were slower and less accurate at naming pi ctures than control children, and in particular, they were poor at naming p ictures that have low frequency names. These findings are discussed within a framework in which picture naming efficiency is related to underlying lan guage skills in both the phonological and semantic domains.