The relationship between word and nonword repetition and
receptive and expressive vocabulary skills in Gulf Arabic speaking
children
Mariam Khater | Mohammed Bin Rashid Center for Special Education-
Operated by The New England Center for Children©
This study investigates early phonological
skills, as represented by nonword repetition (NWR), in typically
developing (TD) Gulf Arabic speaking children and children with
language impairment, and tries to examine findings in relation to
two important NWR hypotheses: the phonological short term memory
account (PSTM, Gathercole &
Baddeley, 1990a) and the linguistic account of Snowling, Chiat, and Hulme
(1991). We developed a new Arabic word and nonword
repetition test (WNRep) and tested 44 TD children and a clinical
group (CL) of 15 children with language impairment, between two and
four years old. Scores were measured using the percent phonemes
correct (PPC) and whole word correct (WWC) methods. The results show
that the TD group scored significantly higher than the CL group on
the WNRep and across one, two and three-syllable words/nonwords, and
that NWR scores correlated significantly with receptive and
expressive vocabulary tests. Apart from its ability to differentiate
between TD and children with language impairment, NWR results
revealed significant differences in groups’ performance even on
one-syllable word and nonwords, which differs from findings in other
languages. The two different scoring methods did not make any
significant contribution to the groups’ results.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Relationship between NWR and vocabulary in TD children and
children with SLI
- 1.2Theories of NWR
- 1.3Factors affecting nonword accuracy
- 1.4The Arabic word and nonword repetition (WNRep) test
- 1.5Developing the Arabic expressive vocabulary test
(AEVT)
- 2.Methods
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2Procedures and scores
- 2.3Reliability
- 3.Results and analysis
- 3.1Descriptive statistics of WNRep
- 3.2Groups’ performance on receptive and expressive vocabulary
tests
- 3.3Correlation between word and nonword repetition and receptive
and expressive vocabulary in TD children
- 3.4Regression analysis on the PPC scoring method for TD and CL
children
- 4.Discussion
- 4.1Summary of findings
- 4.2Theoretical interpretations and implications
- 4.3Word and nonword repetition as clinical markers
- 4.4Relations with receptive and expressive vocabulary
- 4.5Clinical implications
- 5.Conclusion
-
Note
-
References