Single-word and conversational measures of word-finding proficiency

Abstract

Two studies with young adults as participants evaluated the relationship, presumed in the word-finding literature to exist, between slow, inaccurate performances in single-word-naming and semantic-retrieval tasks and disruptions to conversational fluency. The measures evaluated were the frequency of conversational disruptions and the scores from 3 single-word tasks: total time from the Rapid Automatized Naming task (RAN; M. B. Denckla and R. G. Rudel, 1976), standard score from the Brief Test of the Test of Adolescent/Adult Word Finding (TAWF; D. J. German, 1990), and total unique words from the Controlled Oral Word Association task (FAS; A. L. Benton and K. Hamsher, 1978). RAN time was the only significant predictor of the frequency of conversational disruptions, although this relationship was weak (R(2) =.11). In addition, single-word performances did not discriminate between groups of participants with differing levels of conversational fluency. Clinicians are cautioned against identifying word-finding deficits using single-word measures alone. Moreover, the theoretical construct of word-finding difficulties requires additional validation.