Objective: the study aimed at designing a verb-naming test for healthy children, which could serve as a basis for planning an appropriate approach to the assessment of verb-naming ability among aphasic children. Method: the study was carried out in 2000 as an analytical survey with 140 children aged four and five, selected from day care centers in the east of Tehran, through random cluster sampling. In the pictorial approach, the subjects were asked to name the action depicted in any one of 30 color pictures shown to them. In the verbal approach, the subjects were asked 30 questions about the same verbs/actions. Each subject's score was then calculated and considered as an index of verb expression in any one of the two approaches. Findings: no difference was noticed among the four-year old children in terms of subjects' scores on the verbal and pictorial tests, whereas the five-year old girls proved to be better in verbal expression than in pictorial expression. Results: according to the results of the study, asking questions about actions or explaining them seems to be more helpful than using still pictures in retrieving verbs. While encouraging the child to engage in dynamic mental activity, the former seems to make the child think and better remember things. Moreover, the visual decoding of non-verbal information depends on the child's mental condition, and her/his imagination. Thus, still pictures seem to be inadequate means of assessing verb-naming ability.