Synonyms
Definition
Word finding is the ability of a speaker to think of and retrieve specific words to express an intended idea.
Current Knowledge
Usually, word finding takes place in conversational speech as the speaker composes a sentence with nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and other grammatical words. The ease with which words are retrieved is influenced by psycholinguistic factors such as age of acquisition, familiarity, frequency, and phonological complexity (Nickels, 1997). During clinical testing, word finding is often tested in the course of verbal tasks requiring one-word responses, such as confrontation naming of pictures of objects or actions, thinking of words in a specific category (e.g., name animals, say words starting with the letter “s,” name the days of the week), or answering specific questions (e.g., Which animal barks?) (Goodglass, Kaplan, & Barresi, 2001). Clinical measures, however, may not provide a clear...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References and Readings
Goodglass, H., Kaplan, E., & Barresi, B. (2001). The assessment of aphasia and related disorders (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins.
Nickels, L. (1997). Spoken word production and its breakdown in aphasia. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Nickels, L. (2001). Spoken word production. In B. Rapp (Ed.), The handbook of cognitive neuropsychology (pp. 291–320). New York: Psychology Press.
Tingley, S. J., Kyte, C. S., Johnson, C. J., & Beitchman, J. H. (2003). Single-word and conversational measures of word-finding proficiency. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 12, 359–368.
Wilshire, C. E., & Coslett, H. B. (2000). Disorders of word retrieval in aphasia. In S. E. Nadeau, L. J. G. Rothi, & B. Crosson (Eds.), Aphasia and language: Theory to practice (pp. 82–107). New York: Guilford.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this entry
Cite this entry
Raymer, A. (2011). Word Finding. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_938
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_938
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-79947-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-79948-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science