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. Relative to young children reading at the same level, dyslexic children were less accurate at naming pictures that have long names, and they made a disproportionate number of phonological errors. In contrast, poor comprehenders showed normal effects of length but were slower and less accurate at naming pictures than control children, and in particular, they were poor at naming pictures that have low frequency names. These findings are discussed within a framework in which picture naming efficiency is related to underlying language skills in both the phonological and semantic domains.