Effect of Cues on Object Naming in First-Grade Good and Poor Readers

Object-naming deficits in children with reading problems may be due to deficiencies in either the phonological stage of processing or the semantic stage. The present study approached this issue by manipulating the type of cue given (semantic or phonetic) when object drawings were not named correctly by first-grade children. Although the children who were poor readers named significantly fewer objects than the good readers, both groups of children benefited from phonetic cues. In contrast, semantic cues had relatively little effect. These results support the view that difficulty on object naming is more likely related to phonological deficiencies.