Comparison of Verbal Fluency between Children with Learning Disabilities and Typically Developed Children

Document Type : Original article

Authors

1 1 Lecturer, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

2 MSc in Speech Therapy. Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

3 PhD Student in Speech Therapy. Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

4 Department of Epidemiology and Reproductive Health, Reproductive Epidemiology Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and aim: Naming disorder has largely been noted in Learning Disabilities (LD) by researchers. One of the aspects of naming which has been less considered in LD is verbal fluency. The current study aimed to explore verbal fluency among children with LD, to compare it with a control group, and to investigate the effect of demographic characteristics on it.
Materials and Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 30 children with LD (15 male and 15 female, aged: 8.90±1.20) diagnosed by psychiatrists and 30 age-, gender-, and grade-matched controls (15 male and 15 female, aged: 8.71±1.39). Each participant was individually asked to complete a verbal fluency task comprising of semantic and phonemic fluency.
Results: The results revealed that the mean scores of semantic and phonemic fluency were significantly lower in the experimental group as compared to those of the control group (p<0.001), and similar findings were found related to clustering and switching (p<0.001). There was a significant difference in semantic and phonemic fluency between ages across both groups, as well (p<0.05); however, no significant difference was observed in semantic and phonemic fluency scores between males and females in the two groups (p>0.05).
Conclusion: Thecurrent study demonstrated a general weakness of children with learning disability in verbal fluency. Improvement of verbal fluency with development in both groups can highlight the increasing role of reading experiments on the naming skill although gender did not show to have any effect. Considering the importance of naming and lexical skills in literacy, the present study showed the necessity for further and detailed study of verbal fluency in children with learning disabilities.

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The Scientific Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine
Volume 6, Issue 1
March and April 2017
Pages 9-18

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History

  • Receive Date: 06 April 2016
  • Revise Date: 16 August 2016
  • Accept Date: 22 September 2016
  • First Publish Date: 21 March 2017

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