Uses and interpretations of non‐word repetition tasks in children with and without specific language impairments (SLI)

Abstract

Background-The non-word repetition task (NRT) has gained wide acceptance in describing language acquisition in both children with normal language development (NL) and children with specific language impairments (SLI). This task has gained wide acceptance because it so closely matches the phonological component of word learning, and correlates with measures of phonological working memory, a deficit in which is hypothesized to underlie SLI.

The Acquisition of Sign Language: The Impact of Phonetic Complexity on Phonology

“…Non-word repetition tests can be used to test phonotactic sequences that are unexpected or not permitted in a speaker's grammar, but this is rarely done 9 . A second direction would be to examine phonological frequency through the effects of neighbourhood density, given that this is a factor known to play a role in the repetition of spoken words and non-words (Coady & Evans, 2008).…”

“…5 The degree to which this statement is true depends on how word-like the stimuli are. Although non-words are by definition not stored in the lexicon phonotactic probability is an important predictor of how accurately children will repeat them (see Coady & Evans, 2008, for a review).…”

Processamento fonológico em crianças com distúrbio específico de linguagem

“…Studies [11][12][13][14][15] have been showing that subjects with SLI show limited phonologic storage capacity, pointing that such limitation can be the source to the language difficulties existent on SLI cases. The alteration on non-words repetition tests is appearing to be a linguistic marker in this symptom frame, justifying most of the linguistic alterations, such as sentences comprehension and shortened vocabulary 12, 15,34,35 . The hypothesis in which such alterations on the creation of phonologic representations come from PWM deficits has been kept in discussion.…”

Algunos retos y propuestas en la conceptualización, evaluación e intervención del Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje (TEL)

“…En segundo lugar, se suele acudir también a diversos marcadores clínicos. Entre éstos, se han señalado de modo insistente dos problemas que tienen estos niños para, por un lado, usar de manera adecuada determinadas formas gramaticales, entre las que sobresale el empleo del tiempo pasado en los verbos 6,7,8 y por otro lado, para la realización correcta de tareas de repetición de pseudopalabras, es decir, la imitación de palabras sin sentido que varían en su longitud silábica y en su complejidad fonológica 9,10 . En tercer lugar, y debido a hallazgos recientes, se ha revelado que los niños con TEL tienen mayores problemas que sus pares para el aprendizaje de objetivos específicos del lenguaje como por ejemplo habilidades conversacionales, narrativas o académicas 11,12,13,14 .…”