View of children's word-finding difficulties: disciplinary influences

A consensus was not found among the participants regarding those characteristics that constituted a WFP and how word finding was different from or related to word retrieval problems, some forms of "dysfluency," and "language processing" difficulties. The lack of consistency was seen both within and across disciplines. Instances where there was consistent agreement among members of a discipline must be interpreted cautiously because a relatively small number of participants was involved in the interviews. Further, the results should not be generalized to an assessment of all children with WFPs, because only three children were viewed by the professionals. The findings do suggest, however, dimensions along which problems in interpreting WFPs may occur. The analysis of the clinician interviews and videotape viewing of the three language-impaired children have specific implications for clinicians when diagnosing WFPs in children. First, differences in the clinicians' knowledge of a what word finding is, how it is manifested, what relationship it has to other skills, and how it should be assessed was evident. Such differences in understanding WFPs in children have been described in the literature (Gardner, 1974; German, 1983, 1984; Kail & Leonard, 1986; Lewis & Kass, 1982; Nippold, 1992; Oldfield & Winfield, 1964; Snyder & Godley, 1992). Second, the clinicians frequently made diagnostic assumptions when they admittedly were unsure of their conceptual framework and that of their colleagues. The impact of these assumptions was seen in the clinicians' general lack of agreement in the identification of actual instances of WFPs and in their rankings of those tasks believed to be most helpful in making a diagnosis of a WFP.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)