Abstract

This paper focuses on quantitative and qualitative aspects of children's naming skills, assuming that children make use of their lexical and semantic knowledge when confronted with a naming task. 240 monolingual German children, age 2;6 to 8;0, were tested with an oral picture naming test including nouns and verbs. The results on naming accuracy show improvements with increasing age and a better performance in noun naming compared to verb naming. Additionally, a detailed analysis of error types reveals developmental trends as well as effects of word category. With respect to noun naming, semantically related substitutions are dominating. Their proportion increases with age, while unrelated reactions decrease. In naming verbs, children predominantly use circumlocutions, which again gradually improve with regard to adequacy and verb quality. In sum, children's error types point to complementary developmental processes with more refined responses replacing early strategies. Thus, picture naming skills reflect the elaboration of the child's semantic system.