Naming errors of children with specific language impairment

This paper explores why children with SLI are less accurate than peers in naming pictures. Subjects included 66 children with SLI (aged 4:3 to 9:7) with 2 subgroups, one with expressive-only language deficits (SLIexp) and one with receptive and expressive language deficits (SLImix), and 66 children with no language impairment (NLI). Children with SLI made more errors than children with NLI, and proportionally more of their errors were names of objects associated with the pictured object (e.g., shoe/foot) and names that were phonologically related to the target than were those with NLI. The relative frequency of error types was related to pattern of language deficit; in comparison to their NLI peers, a greater proportion of SLIexp errors were phonological errors, and a greater proportion of the SLImix errors were semantic associated, semantic perceptual, and nonsemantic perseverative. The proportion of semantic-associated errors also discriminated a subgroup of the children with SLI from a matched subgroup of the children with SLImix. Interpretations and potential implications are discussed.