Meanings of lexical retrieval in English

The latter finding is consistent with evidence that within-clause pauses are a correlate of speech planning and in particular lexical retrieval.

This has been attributed to lexical retrieval difficulties, but pausing may also reflect other forms of cognitive impairment as it increases with cognitive load.

Methods: We used a picture-description task to elicit a short speech sample, and we evaluated impairments in speech-sound production, speech rate, lexical retrieval, and grammaticality.