The role of age of acquisition in picture and word naming in dyslexic adults

To date there has been numerous reports that early acquired pictures and words are named faster than late acquired pictures and words in normal reading but it is not established whether AoA has the same impact on adult dyslexic naming, especially in a transparent orthography such as Turkish. Independent ratings were obtained for AoA, frequency, name agreement and object familiarity in Turkish for all items in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) line drawing set. Dyslexic (N=15) and nondyslexic (N=15) university undergraduates were asked to name 30 early acquired and 30 late acquired pictures and picture names standardised and selected from these norms. As predicted there were main effects for a) AoA with RTs for Early items named faster than Late items b) reader status with nondyslexic students faster than dyslexic students and c) stimuli types with pictures named slower than words. A two-way interaction between reader status and stimuli type was also significant. Implications of the results for theoretical frameworks of AoA within the cognitive architecture and normal and impaired models of reading are discussed.

Originally presented at the XIV Annual Cognitive Section Meeting in 2007.