Non-word repetition in children with language impairment - pitfalls and possibilities

Specific language impairment has, although not without controversy, been co nsidered as a consequence of a phonological memory deficit. Non-word repeti tion has been proposed as a reliable index of phonological memory and also as predictive of lexical and grammatical development in normally developing and language-impaired children. The main aim was to study the relationship between repetition of words and non-words and expressive language skills ( phonology and grammar) in 27 5-year-old children with language impairment. The authors also wanted to explore the influence of lexical stress on repet ition skills. The results showed that words were significantly easier to re peat than non-words and that non-word repetition skills were significantly correlated to phonological and grammatical development. The most important predictor of non-word repetition skills was output phonology. The conclusio n is that non-word repetition is not a single, reliable index of phonologic al memory in preschool children with language impairment. Also, the influen ce of prosodic variables on segmental aspects of speech production should n ot be overlooked in non-word construction, since it was found that unstress ed syllables were emitted six times more often in prestressed than in post- stressed positions of the words and non-words.