Using archival data from 106 children with and without DLD who spoke two dialects of English, we examined the independent contributions of vocabulary, morphological ability, phonological short term memory (pSTM), and verbal working memory (WM) to exact sentence recall, ungrammatical repetition, and incorrect tense production. For exact repetitions on simpler sentences, performance of the DLD group was predicted by morphological ability, pSTM and WM, while that of the TD group was predicted by vocabulary and sometimes pSTM. On complex sentences, performance of the DLD group was predicted by morphological ability, and the TD group was predicted by pSTM and WM. For ungrammatical repetitions and incorrect tense, morphological ability was a factor for both groups, with WM also affecting the DLD group for ungrammatical production. Thus, sentence recall taxes multiple resources, with more and different factors being taxed at lower levels of complexity for children with DLD than those without.

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on the association between nonword repetition (NWR) and language exposure in bilingual children and explored whether the association is influenced by other variables. We performed a blind literature review on ERIC and Google Scholar, a random-effects model meta-analysis and subgroup analyses to test potential moderators. Out of 822 screened articles, we identified 24 works including 1399 children. Significant associations were found using either cumulative or current exposure, language-like nonwords, phoneme NWR scoring, in children with typical language development. Nonsignificant associations were found in studies either using age of first exposure, on children older than six, with less than 50 participants, using NWR lists containing 16-24 nonwords or with participants having different native languages. Weak associations were found when considering whole-word scoring or gray literature. We highlight the contributions of different variables to NWR, and evidence to optimally design NWR for bilingual language assessment.

Previous work suggests that child-internal and -external factors influence dual language learning (DLL), although more work is needed – to clarify the role of phonological short-term memory (PSTM) and language exposure in particular. Accordingly, we investigated the role of language exposure and PSTM in phonological awareness and receptive and expressive vocabulary development in the majority language in DLL. PSTM was measured with both a language-specific and language-universal nonword repetition task (NWR). Sixty-five DLL preschoolers were assessed twice, five months apart. Results show that maternal majority-language proficiency as well as language-specific and universal NWR predicted all outcomes, whereas length of exposure to the majority language only predicted receptive and expressive vocabulary. Current exposure did not predict any outcome. The findings extend previous research on child-internal and child-external factors as predictors of DLL to phonological awareness and language-universal NWR.

This study examined a potential lexicality advantage in young children's early speech production: do children produce sound sequences less accurately in nonwords than real words? Children aged 3;3-4;4 completed two tasks: a real word repetition task and a corresponding nonword repetition task. Each of the 23 real words had a paired consonant-vowel sequence in the nonword in word-initial position (e.g., ‘su’ in [ˈsutkes] ‘suitcase’ and [ˈsudrɑs]). The word-initial consonant-vowel sequences were kept constant between the paired words. Previous work on this topic compared different sequences of paired sounds, making it hard to determine if those results were due to a lexical or phonetic effect. Our results show that children reliably produced consonant-vowel sequences in real words more accurately than nonwords. The effect was most pronounced in children with smaller receptive vocabularies. Together, these results reinforce theories arguing for interactions between vocabulary size and phonology in language development.

This study investigated whether individual differences in receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition at age 2 years, 4 months to 3 years, 4 months predicted phonological awareness 2 years later. One hundred twenty-one children were tested twice. During the first testing period (Time 1), children’s receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition were measured. Nonword repetition accuracy in the present study was distinct from other widely used measures of nonword repetition in that it focused on narrow transcription of diphone sequences in each nonword that differed systematically in phonotactic probability. At the second testing period (Time 2), children’s phonological awareness was measured. The best predictors of phonological awareness were a measure of speech production and a measure of phonological processing derived from performance on the nonword repetition task. The results of this study suggest that nonword repetition accuracy provides an implicit measure of phonological skills that are indicative of later phonological awareness at an age when children are too young to perform explicit phonological awareness tasks reliably.

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.

Many studies show that poor readers make more errors in nonword repetition than better readers. Although this finding is generally linked to the lower quality of poor readers’ phonological representations in verbal short-term memory, the nature of this poor performance remains unclear. We addressed this issue by focusing on two types of phoneme-related performance in a nonword repetition task: (a) recall of phonemes irrespective of their serial order (phoneme identity) and (b) recall of correctly reproduced phonemes’ serial order (serial order). We tested 91 young adults with and without dyslexia. Generalized linear mixed-effects models demonstrated that controls outperformed individuals with dyslexia in the recall of phonemes’ serial order but failed to detect a difference in the recall of phonemes’ identity. These findings are discussed not only in terms of the nature of or access to phonological representations but also in terms of another concept that has recently been advanced in the literature: a specialized serial order mechanism in verbal short-term memory. We also consider the possibility that individuals with dyslexia may be less sensitive to phonotactic constraints.

The underlying processes of nonword repetition (NWR) have been studied extensively in both typical and atypical development. Most of the research examining long-term memory effects on NWR has focused on lexical and sublexical variables that can only be computed relative to the lexicon of a specific language (e.g., phonotactic probability). Sublexical variables that can be defined without reference to the lexicon (e.g., consonant age of acquisition; CAoA) have received little attention, although recent work has shown a CAoA effect on NWR in young adults by measuring performance differences when the stimuli comprise consonants acquired later versus earlier in speech development. The purpose of this study was to identify whether this sublexical effect occurs earlier in development. Thirty-one typically developing first and second graders completed NWR, nonword reading, and auditory lexical decision tasks. Nonword accuracy and word–nonword discriminability were consistently lower for items comprising later versus earlier acquired phonemes, even after controlling for vocabulary knowledge, but there were no differences in speed measures. Patterns of performance were similar to the CAoA effects observed in young adults from previous work. Results indicate that the sensitivity of NWR performance to these sublexical long-term memory effects occurs in childhood and reflects adultlike patterns of performance.

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.

This study compared NRT-performance in monolingual Dutch and bilingual Turkish–Dutch third-graders using a Dutch Nonword Repetition Task (NRT). Several novel response analyses at the phoneme level were applied to further understand the earlier reported overall accuracy differences in NRT-performance between bilinguals and monolinguals. Analyses in which the retention of phonemes and the retention of their serial order were disentangled revealed that monolinguals outperform bilinguals with respect to the retention of the phonemes themselves. However, both groups did not differ in their retention of the serial order of correctly recalled phonemes. Furthermore, this study confirms that expressive vocabulary skills do affect overall NRT-performance. The results are discussed in light of current short-term memory (STM) models and the role of long-term phonological knowledge in NRT tasks.

The current study examined the influence of phonological structure and language experience on the nonword repetition performance of bilingual children. Twenty-six Spanish-dominant and 26 English-dominant Spanish–English bilingual five-year-old children were matched on current exposure to the dominant language and year of first exposure to English. Participants repeated non-wordlike nonwords in English and Spanish. The Spanish-dominant group performed better than the English-dominant group for both Spanish and English nonwords. In addition, there was a main effect for test language, where Spanish nonwords were produced more accurately than English nonwords overall. The Spanish-dominant group advantage for nonwords is interpreted as emerging from the extra practice the dominant Spanish speakers had producing multisyllabic words.

This study used lexical tasks to examine associations between languages, tasks, and age in bilingual children with primary language impairment. Participants (n = 41, mean age 8;8 years) lived in the United States, spoke primarily Spanish (L1) at home and English (L2) at school, and were identified with moderate to severe impairments in both languages. A total of eight tasks (four in each language) measured breadth of vocabulary knowledge (receptive and expressive vocabulary) and aspects of lexical processing (rapid automatic naming and nonword repetition). Correlational analyses revealed older children outperformed younger children on lexical tasks in L2 but not L1, as well as relative L2 dominance for most individuals and tasks. Positive associations were found between languages on processing-based tasks but not vocabulary measures. Findings were consistent with literature on typical bilingual learners, albeit with a notable increased risk of plateau in L1 growth. Results are interpreted within a Dynamic Systems framework.

In this study 160 children, aged 11 years with a definite history of specific language impairment (SLI), completed four tasks that could be potential positive psycholinguistic markers for this impairment: a third person singular task, a past tense task, a nonword repetition task, and a sentence repetition task. This allowed examination of more than one type of marker simultaneously, facilitating both comparisons between markers and also evaluation of combinations of markers in relation to identifying SLI. The study also provided data regarding the markers in relation to nonverbal IQ, made use of new normative data on all tasks, and examined marker accuracy in relation to current language status. The results show that markers vary in accuracy, with sentence repetition (a previously unused marker) proving to be the most useful. This psycholinguistic marker shows high levels of sensitivity (90%), specificity (85%), and overall accuracy (88%), as well as being able to identify the majority of children whose current language status falls in the normal range despite a history of SLI.