The Test of Word-Finding in Discourse: Diagnostic Utility Evidence

Abstract

The Test of Word Finding in Discourse (TWF-D) was developed as a diagnostic instrument to identify children who potentially have word finding disorders defined by atypically high frequencies of word finding behaviors exhibited in verbal discourse. Validity evidence is provided by the present study demonstrating that the TWF-D efficiently and with a high degree of accuracy differentiates between children with clinically diagnosed word-finding disorders and normal learning children. A global index of word finding behaviors resulted in correct classification of over 90% of the children in both groups. Subsequent application of discriminant analysis results to a normative sample indicated that children identified using the TWF-D global index exhibited one of two primary word finding behavioral patterns: (a) atypically high substitution responses or atypically high reformulation, and (b) repetition responses in the presence of low substitution responses.

Children with word‐finding difficulties‐prevalence, presentation and naming problems

“…Nonetheless, practitioners also highlighted the demands of less structured tasks and narrative tasks were regarded as particularly problematic. This result concurs with German and Glasnapp's (1990) ndings about the diYculties such children have in narrative-based situations. The range of tasks that cause these children problems highlights the needs to develop appropriate (standardized) assessment materials which allow within child comparisons.…”

“…However, it seems likely that there is a reasonable correspondence between clinical impressions or other assessment procedures and the ndings from standardized tests. German and Glasnapp (1990) found a 90% accurate diVerentiation rate of children clinically described as having word nding diYculties in discourse, and normally developing children when they used their own Test of Word Finding in Discourse. In addition, when a subsample of children in this survey were formally tested, at a later date, few false positive identi cations were noted (Dockrell et al 1997a).…”

Efficacy of the Lexicon Pirate strategy therapy for improving lexical learning in school-age children: A randomized controlled trial

“…in therapy sessions about homonyms). For further research, it might be interesting to evaluate the therapy’s effectiveness in discourse by a discourse analysis (comparable to the TWDF; German, 1991).…”

Single-Word and Conversational Measures of Word-Finding Proficiency

“…We showed in Study 2 that the speech-language pathologist's subjective ratings of fluency were predictive of differences in objective measures of conversational fluency. German and colleagues (German, 1987;German & Glasnapp, 1990;German & Simon, 1991) have also supplied evidence that can be interpreted as supportive of a relationship between subjective and objective measures of conversational fluency, although further exploration of the determinants of this relationship would be desirable.…”