Nonword Repetition Task Research Articles

Pronunciation simplification strategies in child language. Experimental study

The aim of this study is to determine the strategies of pronunciation simplification. The sample of the study consisted of 288 Lithuanian children: 96 preschool age children (4;00–4;11), 95 pre-primary school age children (6;00–6;11) and 97 junior primary school age children (8;00–8;11). The data were collected using a non-word repetition task in Lithuanian.The results of the research have shown that Lithuanian children apply universal strategies of pronunciation simplification, mostly substitution and omission; other strategies such as consonant assimilation, metathesis, sound migration to another syllable and sound addition were much less frequent. Also the results show that children possibly apply associations with real Lithuanian words or their derivational forms.The research has demonstrated that the ability to repeat different structure words is related to the rules of Lithuanian phonotactics. Consonant clusters which are typical of Lithuanian words were pronounced accurately, whereas clusters which are rare in Lithuanian words were simplified in their pronunciation. Age was an important factor in the present study: older children repeated non-words more accurately. Older children have a larger lexicon and eventually develop it further; they learn new consonant clusters, which they are capable to pronounce more accurately.

Vowel undershoot in the production of nonwords by English and Mandarin speakers

In a previous study (Yang, 2011), it was found that both Mandarin and English speakers showed vowel undershoot (characterized by decreased vowel duration and lowered first formant) in the production of English vowels while reading a list of real words, but Mandarin speakers could not make a clear tense-lax distinction. The current study aims at examining the degree of undershoot and tense-lax distinction when speakers had to reproduce what they heard without any visual input. In a nonword repetition task, Mandarin and English speakers were auditorily presented with a list, consisting of 8 English nonword triplets with the target vowels /i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ/ embedded: monosyllables, disyllables and trisyllables. Each trial began with a short training session where participants listened to the nonwords in each triplet as many times as they wanted. After training, each nonword were played three times and participants repeated after each token. Our preliminary data showed that English speakers, while maintaining the tense-lax distinction, showed undershoot when producing nonwords across the three syllabic conditions. On the contrary, Mandarin speakers showed very limited undershoot and unclear tense-lax distinction across the three syllabic conditions, especially between /eɪ/ and /ɛ/. [Yu-Jung Lin and Kuan-Yi Chao contributed equally to this project.]

Acoustic cues to distinctive features are modified in the speech of typically-developing versus atypically developing children

Non-word repetition tasks have been used to diagnose children with various developmental difficulties with phonology, but these productions have not been phonetically analyzed to reveal the nature of the modifications produced by children diagnosed with SLI, autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia compared to those produced by typically-developing children. In this study, we compared the modification of predicted acoustic cues to distinctive features of manner, place and voicing for just under 30 children (ages 5-12), for the CN-Rep word inventory, in an extension of the earlier analysis in Levy et al. 2014. Feature cues, including abrupt acoustic landmarks (Stevens 2002) and other acoustic feature cues, were hand-labeled and analysis of factors that may influence feature cue modifications included position in the word, position in the syllable, word length measured in syllables, lexical stress, and manner type. Results suggest specific patterns of modification in specific contexts for specific clinical populations. These findings set the foundation for understanding how phonetic variation in speech arises in both typical and clinical populations, and for using this knowledge to develop tools to aid in more accurate and insightful diagnosis as well as improved intervention methods.

Electrophysiology of Perception and Processing of Phonological Information as Indices of Toddlers' Language Performance.

The toddler years are a critical period for language development and growth. We investigated how event-related potentials (ERPs) to repeated and novel nonwords are associated with clinical assessments of language in young children. In addition, nonword repetition (NWR) was used to measure phonological working memory to determine the unique and collective contribution of ERP measures of phonemic discrimination and NWR as predictors of language ability. Forty children between the ages of 24-48 months participated in an ERP experiment to determine phonemic discrimination to repeated and novel nonwords in an old/new design. Participants also completed a NWR task to explore the contribution of phonological working memory in predicting language. ERP analyses revealed that faster responses to novel stimuli correlated with higher language performance on clinical assessments of language. Regression analyses revealed that an earlier component was associated with lower level phonemic sensitivity, and a later component was indexing phonological working memory skills similar to NWR. Our findings suggest that passive ERP responses indexing phonological discrimination and phonological working memory are strongly related to behavioral measures of language.

Exploring the contribution of phonological memory to metasyntactic abilities in bilingual children

ABSTRACTThe contribution of phonological memory to syntactic abilities has been demonstrated in various populations, but its relationship to metasyntactic abilities, defined as the ability to control syntactic aspects of language, remains largely unexplored. This study therefore aims to examine the contribution of phonological memory in the completion of two metasyntactic tasks: an ungrammatical sentence repetition and an error replication task. Eighty-three bilingual children (Mage = 10.5) completed the two metasyntactic tasks as well as tasks meant to control for lexical knowledge and syntactic abilities. A nonword repetition task measured phonological memory. Contrary to theoretical arguments which suggest that completion of both these tasks demonstrates the effect of phonological memory on metasyntactic abilities, the results show that phonological memory contributes significantly to metasyntactic abilities, only when measured by the repetition of ungrammatical sentences. Results suggest that different metasyntactic tasks rely differently on underlying linguistic and cognitive abilities.

Specific language impairment in a morphologically complex agglutinative Indian language—Kannada

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) remains an underinvestigated disorder in morphologically complex agglutinative languages such as Kannada. Currently, only a few case reports are available on SLI in Dravidian languages. The morphological complexity inherent to Dravidian languages such as Kannada provides a potential avenue to verify one of the two prevailing accounts of SLI: the morphological richness theory and CGC (Computational Grammatical Complexity) hypothesis. While the previous theory predicts the relatively spared performance of children with SLI (CwSLI) on syntactic morphology in morphologically complex languages, the latter predicts a diametrically opposite performance. Data from a group of 15 Kannada-speaking CwSLI supported the morphological richness theory, and further revealed five distinct profiles of SLI. The results of this study reflected that CwSLI learning the agglutinative language (Kannada) as compared with language-matched children without SLI, displayed some shared deficits (e.g., in phonological processing on a non-word repetition task) with CwSLI learning English. However, CwSLI learning the morphosyntactically rich language Kannada differed remarkably from English-learning CwSLI by not showing deficits in syntactic morphology relative to language-matched peers (e.g., PNG, verb, tense, case, and pronoun).

Assessment of bilingual children: What if testing both languages is not possible?

Language delays of bilingual children can arise from language impairment (LI) but also from insufficient exposure to the target language. A reliable diagnosis of LI in bilingual children is therefore ideally based on the evaluation of both languages, as LI affects each language that is learned. However, due to the multitude of language combinations that are encountered in clinical practice, this is often not feasible. Bilingual norm-referencing may offer a solution, but the heterogeneity within the bilingual population makes it difficult to determine appropriate standards for every child. The present study examined an alternative approach to assessing both languages or using bilingual norm-referencing, aiming to assemble instruments that reduce bias against bilingual children. We used a four-group design, including monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (N=132), to first investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on risks associated with a child’s early language development and the prevalence of language problems in the family, as reported by parents. Second, we evaluated the diagnostic validity of these two indices, and, in addition, combined these with two unbiased language measures which we previously examined in isolation: a quasi-universal nonword repetition task and a narrative task. Results showed that the index of Early Language Development was a strong predictor of LI. In combination with the two direct language measures, it excellently identified the presence or absence of LI in and across monolingual and bilingual learning contexts.Learning outcomes: As a result of this study, the reader will learn about an alternative approach to testing a bilingual child in both languages. The reader will recognize the importance of using unbiased measures for the identification of LI in a bilingual context, and, in addition, will appreciate the value of combining parental report with direct language measures.

Shortened Nonword Repetition Task (NWR-S): A Simple, Quick, and Less Expensive Outcome to Identify Children With Combined Specific Language and Reading Impairment.

The purpose of this research note was to validate a simplified version of the Dutch nonword repetition task (NWR; Rispens & Baker, 2012). The NWR was shortened and scoring was transformed to correct/incorrect nonwords, resulting in the shortened NWR (NWR-S). NWR-S and NWR performance were compared in the previously published data set of Rispens and Baker (2012; N = 88), who compared NWR performance in 5 participant groups: specific language impairment (SLI), reading impairment (RI), both SLI and RI, one control group matched on chronological age, and one control group matched on language age. Analyses of variance showed that children with SLI + RI performed significantly worse than other participant groups in NWR-S, just as in NWR. Logistic regression analyses showed that both tasks can predict an SLI + RI outcome. NWR-S holds a sensitivity of 82.6% and a specificity of 95.4% in identifying children with SLI + RI. The sensitivity of the original NWR is 87.0% with a specificity of 87.7%. As the original NWR, the NWR-S comprising a subset of 22 nonwords scored with a simplified scoring system can identify children with combined SLI and RI while saving a significant amount of the needed assessment time. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5150116.

Word and Nonword Repetition Abilities in Spanish Language: Longitudinal Evidence from Typically Developing and Late Talking Children.

This longitudinal study examined the early word and nonword repetition abilities of monolingual Spanish speaking children. We explored the role that word status, word length, and time play in repetition performance of children with different vocabulary levels. We also examined the predictive value of vocabulary level in repetition abilities. Thirty-seven children participated in this study: 15 late talkers and 22 typically developing children. Families completed the Spanish version of the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory (MCDI) at age 2; children performed a word and nonword repetition task at three different moments, with a temporal interval of 6 months between Time 1 and Time 2, and eight months between Time 2 and Time 3, periods during which linguistic development takes place. We found significant effects for word status, word length, vocabulary level and time: words are repeated better than nonwords; one syllable items are easier to repeat than two and three syllable ones; the performance of late talking children is lower compared to typically developing children throughout the study; and repetition abilities improve longitudinally. In addition, early vocabulary level predicts subsequent repetition abilities and early nonword repetition abilities predict future nonword repetition performance.

The clinical examination of non-word repetition tasks in identifying Persian-speaking children with primary language impairment

ObjectiveThis study aimed to examine the diagnostic accuracy of a non-word repetition (NWR) test in identifying Persian-speaking preschool children with specific/primary language impairment (PLI). Children with PLI show consistently poorer performance in non-word repetition tasks than their typically developing language (TDL) counterparts. It is assumed that the ability to repeat non-words triggers language skills and that the absence of this ability may be responsible for language impairment in PLI children. MethodsTwenty preschool children with PLI participated in this study and were compared with 31 peers whose language skills were developing typically. The TDL children were randomly selected from daycare centers, and the children with PLI were referred by qualified speech-language pathologists from speech therapy clinics. A Persian NWR test was administered and scored using two levels of scoring: item-level scoring and syllable-level scoring.Data were analyzed in two phases. The first phase aimed to determine any differences between the two groups of children in terms of NWR ability. The second phase examined the diagnostic measures of the test. ResultsThe results of first phase documented that both scoring methods for the NWR test significantly differentiated between children with PLI and their normal peers. The second phase indicated that both scoring methods for the NWR test have good sensitivity and specificity in differentiating Persian-speaking children with PLI from their normal peers. ConclusionNon-word repetition can be a reliable clinical marker of PLI in Persian-speaking preschool children.

A Nonword Repetition Task to Assess Bilingual Children’s Phonology

ABSTRACTChildren with specific language impairment (SLI) are particularly sensitive to phonological complexity in their language. Their performance drops when there are specific phonological structures or when complexity increases. A nonword repetition (NWR) test, which aims to assess the phonology of bilingual speakers with and without SLI, should include phonological properties that are independent of the language and phonological properties whose complexity is quantifiable. The methodology and constraints related to the creation of a NWR test named LITMUS-NWR-FRENCH, which combines these two objectives, are presented. This task was tested on a population of 67 children, 5½ to 8½ years old, bilingual and monolingual, with and without SLI, having in common French as L1 or L2. Results show that the LITMUS-NWR-FRENCH task differentiates between children with and without SLI in the context of bilingualism. It also shows the influence and importance of phonological complexity in children with SLI.

Comparing Specific Language Impairment and Hearing Impairment: Different Profiles in German Verbal Agreement Morphology

ABSTRACTThe study aims at identifying characteristic phenotypes for children with SLI and children with sensorineural hearing impairment (HI) in language and in domains associated with language. We focus on verbal agreement inflection and phonological short-term memory, phenomena that have been repeatedly found to be impaired in both groups of children. A nonword repetition task and an elicitation task on subject-verb agreement were conducted with three groups of monolingual German children: (i) 11 children with SLI, (ii) 10 children with HI (hearing loss between 38 and 75 dB) and hearing aids, and (iii) 10 typically developing children. Data analyses reveal quantitatively and qualitatively different performance patterns with respect to verbal agreement inflection in children with SLI and children with HI but no different patterns for nonword repetition. Our results not only identify deficits in verbal agreement inflection as a sensitive, specific, and selective clinical marker for SLI in German, but they also shed some light on the nature of the deficits that underlie SLI.

Short-Term Memory Performance in 7- and 8-Year-Old Children: The Relationship Between Phonological and Pitch Processing.

The relationship between short-term memory for phonology and pitch was explored by examining accuracy scores for typically developing children for 5 experimental tasks: immediate nonword repetition (NWR), nonword repetition with an 8-s silent interference (NWRS), pitch discrimination (PD), pitch discrimination with an 8-s silent interference (PDS), and pitch matching (PM). Thirty-six 7- and 8-year-old children (21 girls, 15 boys) with normal hearing, language, and cognition were asked to listen to and repeat nonsense words (NWR, NWRS), make a same versus different decision between 2 tones (PD, PDS), and listen to and then vocally reproduce a tone (PM). Results showed no significant correlations between tasks of phonological memory and tests of pitch memory, that participants scored significantly better on nonword repetition tasks than PD and PM tasks, and that participants performed significantly better on tasks with no silent interference. These findings suggest that, for typically developing children, pitch may be stored and rehearsed in a separate location than phonological information. Because of fundamental task differences, further research is needed to corroborate these data and determine the presence of developmental effects and neuroanatomical locations where a potential language/music overlap is occurring in children.

On-line processing and comprehension of direct object pronoun sentences in Spanish-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment

ABSTRACTEleven native Spanish-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (8;3–10;11) and 11 typically developing children (8;7–10;8) received a comprehensive psycholinguistic evaluation. Participants listened to either Direct Object (DO) pronoun sentences or filler sentences without any pronoun, and they decided whether a picture on the screen (depicting the antecedent, another noun in the sentence, or an unrelated object) was ‘alive’. They answered comprehension questions about pronoun sentences. Children with SLI showed significantly poorer comprehension of DO pronoun sentences when answering comprehension questions than children with Typical Language Development (TLD). This poor pronoun sentence understanding correlated significantly with poor auditory sentence completion, non-word repetition task and expressive vocabulary skills. Children with SLI were significantly slower in the animacy decisions than children with TLD across all pronoun and filler sentence conditions. Both groups exhibited high accuracy in the animacy decisions for any conditions. Clinical implications are discussed.

Effects of Vocabulary and Phonotactic Probability on 2-Year-Olds\u2019 Nonword Repetition

This study investigates the relationship between nonword repetition (NWR) and vocabulary in 2-year-olds. Questions addressed are whether (1) NWR and vocabulary are associated, (2) phonotactic probability affects NWR, and (3) there is an interaction effect between phonotactic probability and vocabulary on NWR performance. The general aim of the study is to investigate whether NWR, as a task of phonological storage, assesses the quality of phonological representations in children as young as 2 years of age. 557 Dutch 2-year-olds performed a NWR task containing items of varying phonotactic probability as well as a receptive vocabulary task. The results showed a moderate, significant correlation between NWR and vocabulary. Phonotactic probability had an effect on NWR performance. Further analyses showed that there was a significant interaction between phonotactic probability and vocabulary for part of the items. These results support previously reported effects of vocabulary and phonotactic probability on NWR in older, English-speaking children for a large sample of Dutch-speaking 2-year-olds, and provide evidence that NWR assesses the quality of phonological representations already in very young children.

Phonological memory and aptitude components: Contributions to second language proficiency

This study is an examination of the relationship between phonological short-term memory, or simply phonological memory (PM), language learning aptitude, and second language (L2) proficiency in advanced adult L2 learners (French native speakers, N=40) with relatively homogeneous previous and current L2 experience. PM was measured by two different measures: a nonword repetition (NWR) task and a serial recognition (SR) task. Correlational analyses revealed that PM, as measured by each of the tasks, was significantly related to L2 proficiency. Aptitude (measured by the TALV, Test d'aptitude aux langues vivantes) also correlated significantly with L2 proficiency and with PM (NWR). The two PM tasks were significantly correlated. An exploratory factor analysis revealed three main factors: memory, L2 proficiency (reading and vocabulary) and aptitude (Spelling Clues and Words in Sentences). Overall, results reveal continuing links between phonological memory, aptitude, and L2 proficiency in advanced learners.

A verbal strength in children with Tourette syndrome? Evidence from a non-word repetition task

Tourette syndrome (TS) is characterized by motor and vocal tics, and frontal/basal-ganglia abnormalities. Whereas cognitive strengths have been found in other neurodevelopmental disorders, less attention has been paid to strengths in TS, or to verbal strengths in any neurodevelopmental disorder. We examined whether the finding of speeded TS production of rule-governed morphological forms (e.g., “slipped”) that involve composition (Walenski, Mostofsky, & Ullman, 2007) might extend to another language domain, phonology. Thirteen children with TS and 14 typically-developing (TD) children performed a non-word repetition task: they repeated legal phonological strings (e.g.,“naichovabe”), a task that taps rule-governed (de)composition. Parallel to the morphology findings, the children with TS showed speeded production, while the two groups had similar accuracy. The results were not explained by potentially confounding factors, including IQ. Overall, the findings suggest that rule-governed grammatical composition may be speeded in TS, perhaps due to frontal/basal-ganglia abnormalities.

Subject–verb agreement and verbal short-term memory: A perspective from Greek children with specific language impairment

This study investigated the performance of school age Greek-speaking children with SLI on verbal short-term memory (VSTM) and Subject–Verb (S-V) agreement in comparison to chronological age controls and younger typically developing children. VSTM abilities were assessed by means of a non-word repetition task (NRT) and an elicited production task, an off-line grammaticality judgment (GJ) task, and an on-line self-paced listening task were employed to examine S-V agreement abilities. The study found significant between-group differences in the NRT and the off-line GJ task. No significant between-group differences were found for the S-V agreement production task and for reaction times of the on-line task. The authors argue that the children with SLI showed increased grammatical sensitivity in S-V agreement and relate their lower performance on the off-line GJ task to the task’s metalinguistic demands. The findings suggest that deficits in VSTM constitute a robust marker for SLI and claim that S-V agreement can be acquired by SLI individuals with apparent limitations in VSTM.

Phonological memory in young children who stutter

This study investigated phonological memory in 5- and 6-year old children who stutter. Participants were 11 children who stutter matched on general language abilities, maternal education level, and sex to 11 typically fluent children. Participants completed norm-referenced nonword repetition and digit span tasks, as well as measures of expressive and receptive vocabulary and articulation. The nonword repetition task included stimuli that ranged from 1 to 7 syllables, while the digit naming task contained number strings containing 2–10 digits. Standardized tests of vocabulary and articulation abilities were tested as well. Groups were comparable on measures expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, and articulation. Despite the fact that the majority of participants scored within typical limits, young children who stutter still performed significantly less well than children who do not stutter on the nonword repetition task. No between-group differences were revealed in the digit naming task. Typically fluent children demonstrated strong correlations between phonological memory tasks and language measures, while children who stutter did not. These findings indicate that young children who stutter may have sub-clinical differences in nonword repetition.

Words are not enough: nonword repetition as an indicator of arcuate fasciculus integrity during brain tumor resection

OBJECTIVE Subcortical electrical stimulation during brain surgery may allow localization of functionally crucial white matter fibers and thus tailoring of the tumor resection according to its functional limits. The arcuate fasciculus (AF) is a white matter bundle connecting frontal, temporal, and parietal cortical areas that is often disrupted by left brain lesions. It plays a critical role in several cognitive functions related to phonological processing, but current intraoperative monitoring methods do not yet allow mapping of this tract with sufficient precision. In the present study the authors aimed to test a new paradigm for the intraoperative monitoring of the AF. METHODS In this report, the authors studied 12 patients undergoing awake brain surgery for tumor resection with a related risk of AF damage. To preserve AF integrity and the cognitive processes sustained by this tract in the intraoperative context, the authors used real word repetition (WR) and nonword repetition (NWR) tasks as complements to standard picture naming. RESULTS Compared with the errors identified by WR or picture naming, the NWR task allowed the detection of subtle errors possibly related to AF alterations. Moreover, only 3 patients demonstrated phonological paraphasias in standard picture naming, and in 2 of these patients the paraphasias co-occurred with the total loss of WR and NWR ability. Before surgery, lesion volume predicted a patient's NWR performance. CONCLUSIONS The authors suggest that monitoring NWR intraoperatively may complement the standard naming tasks and could permit better preservation of the important language production functions subserved by the AF.