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How do bilingual dyslexic and typically developing children perform in nonword repetition? Evidence from a study on Italian L2 children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2019

Maria Vender Open the ORCID record for Maria Vender [Opens in a new window] ,
Denis Delfitto  and
Chiara Melloni
Maria Vender*
Affiliation:
University of Verona
Denis Delfitto
Affiliation:
University of Verona
Chiara Melloni
Affiliation:
University of Verona
*
Address for correspondence: Maria Vender, E-mail: maria.vender@univr.it
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Abstract

Nonword repetition is typically impaired in dyslexia. Conversely, native-like performance is early achieved by bilingual children whose second language has a simple phonotactic system, like Italian. Our study aimed at comparing the performance of monolingual and bilingual children with and without dyslexia in a nonword repetition task modeled after Italian. We assessed nonword repetition in 111 school-aged children: 24 Italian L2 bilingual dyslexics, 24 Italian monolingual dyslexics, 30 Italian L2 bilingual controls and 33 Italian monolingual controls. We administered an original task composed of 40 nonwords ranging from two to five syllables; the complexity of the syllables was also manipulated. Results showed that both groups of dyslexics underperformed controls at each syllable length. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual controls. Conversely, bilingual dyslexics underperformed monolingual dyslexics only with four-syllable nonwords. The possible use of nonword repetition tasks to assist in the identification of dyslexia in bilingual children is also discussed.

Keywords

Bilingualismdevelopmental dyslexianonword repetitionbilingualism and dyslexia interactionidentification of dyslexiaidentification of dyslexia in bilingualism
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Interpreting: A window into bilingual processing , August 2020 , pp. 884 - 896
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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