I spent the last 3 days at the Illinois Speech-Language-Hearing Association convention, and attended some energizing sessions. The most relevant to this blog was Dr. Diane German’s presentation entitled, “Word Finding: Picture Naming is Not Enough to Identify Semantic and Phonological Word-Finding Errors.” Dr. German’s passion for the study of word finding is contagious. I left there determined to be more precise in my therapy for my word finders.
Dr. German stressed how important it is to match our goals with specific error patterns. I admit to getting lazy sometimes in my therapy with word retrieval clients: I start to treat them all with the same strategies. So for the next 3 posts, I’m going to write about the differences among 3 types of word finders. Each type will benefit from different interventions. We have to start with the assumption that the “evasive word” is one that is in the child’s repertoire: given the word, he knows its meaning. That is why his difficulties are word retrieval, not vocabulary.
“Type 1” word finders fit the error pattern that Dr. German calls “slip of the tongue.” Error pattern 1 are kids who make semantic, lemma-related errors. What is a “lemma-related error”? This is a disruption in accessing the semantic features of a word. How do we recognize these kids? These are the kids who are fast but inaccurate. They make a lot of revisions and substitutions of words that are in the same category or somehow related to the target word. They may say “basketball, I mean baseball,” or “I want a hammer, I mean a nail.” We typically do not see secondary characteristics in these children (eyes to the corner of the room, fist to the thigh, palm hitting one’s forehead in frustration).
The errors we find with Type 1 more often occur on frequently occurring words. They are more typically familiar and shorter words and occur in “dense neighborhoods.” Dense neighborhoods are groups of words that are phonologically similar (red, bed, head or head, hid, had). These kids sometimes make mistakes retrieving compound words. When they read aloud, they make errors in familiar words. So when they see “dog,” they may say “puppy.” Obviously, they read the word correctly if they substituted “puppy” for “dog.” It was an error in retrieval, not a reading error.
Type 1 word finders might regularize irregular verbs: he runded, she eated. In naming categories, they might name examplars within the category instead of giving the category name (instead of “vegetable,” he might name “broccoli”). They realize they were inaccurate, and correct themselves (“broccoli, I mean vegetable.” ). The reason for this is that the words are competing within the child’s lexical system. He names a word quickly and immediately recognizes his error.
These students benefit from slowing down. Some of the strategies I use for children who stutter are effective with these rapid, inaccurate namers: model a calm, steady pace and allow a slight pause before responding. I play games in which the children must pause before responding in order to advance on a game board. I remind them that it is more important to be accurate than to be fast. I remind them to use “thinking time” to check their own answers.
That’s my understanding of “type 1” word finding errors. Any mistakes are my own, and not due to Dr. German’s presentation! Please go to her website http://wordfinding.com/ for more info.