Word-finding difficulties in French-speaking children with SLI: a case STUDY

This study presents the case of a 9-year-old boy, Jeoffrey, with word-finding difficulties. In an attempt to investigate the cause(s) of these difficulties, an in-depth evaluation of his semantic and phonological skills was carried out, in which lexical and phonological variables such as age of acquisition or phonological complexity were controlled. Jeoffrey's performance was compared to a child matched for age. Although Jeoffrey showed no apparent phonological deficit, our results revealed deficits in semantic processes. We argue that this boy's word-finding difficulties are the result of imprecise and unspecified semantic representations. Therefore, as this case demonstrates, it is essential to determine the origin(s) of children's word-finding difficulties, which could be different and specific for each child presenting such a lexical deficit.