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Naming to Description

SKILL: Talking

DIFFICULTY: 5/5

LEVELS: 3, based on part of speech

BRIEF RATIONALE: The cueing hierarchy provides increasing support to build independence in responsive naming.

In Naming to Description, you will hear a description and name the target word.  Type or dictate the answer using the microphone button. The treatment auto-adjusts in difficulty based on performance.


CUES: A cues button is available in the lower-left corner of the screen to provide different cues to help name the target word. Using the cues will mark the item as incorrect (as it was not answered independently), but may help you name the target word. The following cues can be used in any order:

  1. FIRST LETTER:  the first letter is displayed along with the number of letters in the word
  2. STARTING SOUND: the initial sound is played
  3. SENTENCE: a sentence is displayed with audio as a fill-in cue
  4. ANAGRAM:  the letters of the word appear in random order
  5. WORD: the full orthographic text is displayed with audio of the word

FOR THE CLINICIAN:

Naming to Description is a responsive naming task to support word-finding difficulties. Miller and colleagues (2010) reported that auditory responsive naming has stronger associations with executive functioning than visual confrontation naming, indicating increased cognitive load.


To further the complexity of this treatment, verbs and abstract nouns were included. Verbs are often more difficult to retrieve than nouns, especially for those with non-fluent aphasia (Wahlstrand & Saldert, 2025). Abstract nouns (like wisdom or solution) are difficult because they have low concreteness (the ability to be perceived through the senses) and imageability  (the ability to visualize the word) (Kiran et al., 2009; Sandberg & Kiran, 2013). Training in complex language, such as abstract nouns, may support generalization to untrained words (Sandberg & Kiran, 2014).

Learn more about treating anomia in our article, What SLPs Need to Know: Anomia

Selected References:

  1. Kiran, S., Sandberg, C., & Abbott, K. (2009). Treatment for lexical retrieval using abstract and concrete words in persons with aphasia: Effect of complexity. Aphasiology, 23(7–8), 835–853.
  2. Miller, K. M., Finney, G. R., Meador, K. J., & Loring, D. W. (2010). Auditory responsive naming versus visual confrontation naming in Dementia. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 24(1), 103–118.
  3. Sandberg, C., & Kiran, S. (2013). Analysis of abstract and concrete word processing in persons with aphasia and age-matched neurologically healthy adults using fMRI. Neurocase, 20(4), 361–388.
  4. Sandberg, C., & Kiran, S. (2014). How justice can affect jury: Training abstract words promotes generalisation to concrete words in patients with aphasia. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 24(5), 738–769.

  5. Wahlstrand, E., & Saldert, C. (2025). An examination of noun and verb naming differences in aphasia: Effects of lesion site, aphasia type and the use of static or dynamic stimuli. Aphasiology, 40(3), 521–541.