Intervention for children with word-finding difficulties: a parallel group randomised control trial

<i>Purpose</i>: The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-finding difficulties (WFDs). <i>Method</i>: Twenty children age 6–8 years with WFDs confirmed by a discrepancy between comprehension and production on the Test of Word Finding-2, were randomly assigned to intervention (<i>n</i> = 11) and waiting control (<i>n</i> = 9) groups. The intervention group had six sessions of intervention which used word-webs and targeted children’s meta-cognitive awareness and word-retrieval. <i>Result</i>: On the treated experimental set <i>(n</i> = 25 items) the intervention group gained on average four times as many items as the waiting control group (<i>d</i> = 2.30). There were also gains on personally chosen items for the intervention group. There was little change on untreated items for either group. <i>Conclusion</i>: The study is the first randomised control trial to demonstrate an effect of word-finding therapy with children with language difficulties in mainstream school. The improvement in word-finding for treated items was obtained following a clinically realistic intervention in terms of approach, intensity and duration.