Developmental Patterns of Nonword Repetition in Preschool Children

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate developmental patterns of nonword repetition in preschool children and to examine the relationship between nonword repetition performance and vocabulary and articulatory skills. Methods: A nonword repetition task was administrated to a total of 185 typically developing children from 2 years 6 months to 6 years 11 months of age. The percentage of correct nonword repetition was measured at non-word item, syllable, and phoneme levels and compared among age groups. Raw scores from the Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test and percentage of consonants correct from the Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children were obtained from each participant to examine their relationships with nonword repetition performance. Results: The age groups showed significant differences in nonword repetition performance. The performance increased with the greatest extent between late 2 years old and early 3 years old and showed gradual increases afterwards. The nonword repetition performance became stable around 4 years 5 months, showing no differences among the older children. Their performance also showed a significant relationship between receptive and expressive vocabulary and articulatory skills. The results showed that the Pearson coefficient between the correct percent of nonword repetition at the syllable level and percent of consonants correct was the highest. Conclusion: The results show that nonword repetition can be used to screen speech and language disorders. Therefore, the nonword repetition performance of preschool typically developing children in this study can be used as references to diagnose speech and language disorders and to understand the underlying deficits of the disorders.