title: Word-finding ability and design fluency in developmental dyslexia.
abstract: Certain oral as well as visual language disorders now appear characteristic of the developmental dyslexia syndrome. Recent research has revealed word-finding difficulties in dyslexic children but has left unanswered questions about specificity and causality. Verbal and non-verbal fluency in dyslexics and non-dyslexic CA- and RA-matched controls were measured by means of cued lexical retrieval and stick design tasks. Evidence for dyslexia-related difficulties was found only at the word form level of access. At the semantic level, dyslexics' word finding was superior. Non-verbal (design) fluency was normal. Such findings implicate long-term linguistic memory processes in dyslexia and are consistent with neurocognitive models that emphasize diffuse left hemisphere dysfunction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Scotland, UK.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Griffiths
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D019965:Neurocognitive Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010700:Phonetics; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning