WORD-FINDING ABILITY AND DESIGN FLUENCY IN DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXIA

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. 1991 The British Psychological Society