A Nonword Repetition Task to Assess Bilingual Children’s Phonology

ABSTRACT

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are particularly sensitive to phonological complexity in their language. Their performance drops when there are specific phonological structures or when complexity increases. A nonword repetition (NWR) test, which aims to assess the phonology of bilingual speakers with and without SLI, should include phonological properties that are independent of the language and phonological properties whose complexity is quantifiable. The methodology and constraints related to the creation of a NWR test named LITMUS-NWR-FRENCH, which combines these two objectives, are presented. This task was tested on a population of 67 children, 5½ to 8½ years old, bilingual and monolingual, with and without SLI, having in common French as L1 or L2. Results show that the LITMUS-NWR-FRENCH task differentiates between children with and without SLI in the context of bilingualism. It also shows the influence and importance of phonological complexity in children with SLI.

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and all those who assisted with various aspects of the study: Laurie Tuller, Philippe Prévost, Rasha Zebib, Lætitia de Almeida, Éléonore Morin, Angela Grimm, the student assistants, and finally the clinicians and the families who participated in the study.

Funding

This study was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) Grant - ANR-12-FRAL-0014-01.

Notes

¹ These numbers are corroborated by the LAPSyD database consultation (Maddieson et al. 2011).

² The ELO-L (Zebib et al. In press) is, to the best of our knowledge, the only standardized tests available for Arabic. ELO-L is based on Lebanese and normed on Lebanese children. Adaptations for Algerian, Libyan, Moroccan, and Tunisian were recorded.

³ However, children with a score below the 9th percentile but with a normal WISC PIQ or a normal score on another nonverbal test were included.

⁴ From Thordardottir (2013).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) Grant - ANR-12-FRAL-0014-01.