Real‐word repetition as a predictor of grammatical competence in Italian children with typical language development

Background: Non‐word repetition in children is a skill related to, but separable from grammatical ability. Lexical skill may bridge the gap between these two abilities. Aims: The main aim was to determine whether real‐word‐repetition tasks could be better as predictors of grammatical ability than non‐word‐repetition tasks in children with typical language. This proposal was pursued because lexical knowledge was assumed to make performance in repetition tasks more representative of other language abilities, whereas non‐word‐repetition tasks are heavily influenced by phonological short‐term memory. Methods & Procedures: In order to investigate this possibility, three repetition tasks (two real‐word lists characterized by different lexical knowledge and one non‐word list), were compared in three groups of three‐ to four‐year‐olds with typical language (42 children). Grammatical ability was tested through probes for third‐person plural inflection and direct‐object clitic use. Outcomes & Results: Real words were repeated more accurately than non‐words and the non‐words were more sensitive to Syllable length than real words. Performance on all repetition tasks was correlated with grammatical ability, but real words predicted variance in grammatical ability to a greater extent than non‐words. Conclusions & Implications: Given the lexical information contained in real words, repetition of such words was a better predictor of grammatical ability than non‐word repetition. Future research should replicate and extend these results. Tasks using real words may also have considerable clinical potential; for this reason, these tasks might also be included in studies of children with language impairment.