The purpose of this study was to assess the nonword repetition skills of 24 children who do (CWS; n = 12) and do not stutter (CWNS; n = 12) between the ages of 3;0 and 5;2. Findings revealed that CWS produced significantly fewer correct two-and three-syllable nonword repetitions and made significantly more phoneme errors on three-syllable nonwords relative to CWNS. In addition, there was a significant relationship between performance on a test of expressive phonology and nonword repetition for CWS, but not CWNS. Findings further revealed no significant fluctuation in fluency as nonwords increased in length. Taken together, findings lend support to previous work, suggesting that nonword repetition skills differ for CWS compared with CWNS, and that these findings cannot be attributed to (a) weak language performance on the part of CWS, or (b) the occurrence of stuttering in the course of nonword production.Educational objectives: After reading this article, the learner will be able to: (a) describe one common means of assessing phonological working memory in children; (b) summarize the performance differences of children who stutter compared to peers on a nonword repetition task; (c) compare the results of the present study with previous work in this area. KeywordsStuttering; Phonological; Nonword repetition; Children Nonword repetition in young children who do and do not stutterAs a group, children who stutter (CWS) tend to differ from their peers in a range of areas, including language (e.g., see Hall, 2004;Weiss, 2004, for recent reviews). Perhaps because differences in the language performance of CWS tend to be subclinical (i.e., not constituting a language disorder), the literature has not focused on the many language-related areas that have been associated with language performance in other populations. In particular, one language-related area that has received considerable attention is the role of phonological working memory in the language performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI; e.g., Baddeley & Wilson, 1993;Botting & Conti-Ramsden, 2001;Conti-Ramsden, 2003;Ellis Weismer et al., 2000;Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990;Gray, 2003;Marton & Schwartz, 2003;Montgomery, 1995a;Munson, Kurtz, & Windsor, 2005). As a group, these * Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julie D. Anderson, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, 200 Jordan Avenue South, Bloomington, Indiana 47405-7002. Electronic mail may be sent to judander@indiana.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Fluency Disord. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2008 July 7. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript studies generally reveal that nonword repetition represents an area of weakness for children with SLI.For example, Montgomery (1995b) examined working memory and sentence comprehension in school-age children with SLI and language-matched peers with typically developing language using nonword repetition a...

Relatively recently, experimental studies of linguistic processing speed in children who stutter (CWS) have emerged, some of which suggest differences in performance among CWS compared to children who do not stutter (CWNS). What is not yet well understood is the extent to which underlying cognitive skills may impact performance on timed tasks of linguistic performance. The purpose of this study was to explore possible relationships between measures of linguistic processing speed and two aspects of cognition: phonological working memory and attention. Participants were 9 CWS and 14 CWNS between the ages of 3;6 and 5;2. Children participated in a computerized picture naming task (an index of linguistic processing speed) and a nonword repetition task (an index of phonological working memory). Parents completed a temperament behavior questionnaire, from which information about the children's attentional skills was collected. Findings revealed that the groups did not differ from each other on speed of picture naming or attention; however, the CWS performed significantly worse in nonword repetition. In addition, after partialling out the effects of age, (a) for CWS only, there was a significant negative relationship between picture naming speed and nonword repetition; (b) there were no significant relationships for either group between aspects of attention and picture naming speed; and (c) only the CWNS showed a significant relationship between nonword repetition and focused attentional skills. These results underscore the need to consider the underlying skills associated with lexically-related aspects of language production when examining the task performances of CWS and CWNS.

Background: Assessing narrative discourse production in persons with aphasia has long challenged clinicians seeking to improve functional outcomes. Fortunately, the development of single picture or picture sequence stimuli has enabled clinicians to quantify aspects of elicited narrative discourse production in a clinical context. However, also needed for the analysis of the narrative discourse of individuals with aphasia are performance data for adults without brain damage. Such comparative data of both younger and older adults would considerably extend the clinical usefulness of discourse tasks that incorporate picture stimuli. However, elicited narrative discourse samples are only valuable as assessment tasks if the procedure yields samples of similar quality for an individual over time. Aims: The main objectives of this investigation were (a) to characterise the quality of the discourse narratives of non-brain-damaged (NBD) adults, examining the effects of stimulus types on their performance; (b) to compare the proportion of main events conveyed by younger and older NBD adults on the elicited narrative task, and (c) to estimate the test± retest reliability of these tasks with each group of participants. Methods & Procedures:A total of 40 neurologically intact adults were divided into younger (YG; N = 21) and older (OD; N = 19) groups. Participants attended two sessions, 10±20 days apart. Each time, participants viewed two pictures and two picture sequences (Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993) and told what was going on in the pictures. The language samples of each participant were then evaluated for the proportion of main events included, and test±retest reliability was assessed.Outcomes & Results: The YG group conveyed a significantly larger proportion of main events than the OD group. The main effect for picture stimulus was also significant; participants told significantly more main events in response to sequential versus single picture stimuli, regardless of age. Test±retest results yielded strong, positive correlations between sessions for both groups. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that age does influence performance in elicited narrative discourse. The YG group conveyed more causal links and relationships between the events depicted in the pictures than the OD group. Test±retest results indicate that the measure is stable over time for younger and older adults without brain damage.

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Purpose Incidental reading provides a powerful opportunity for partial word knowledge growth in the school-age years. The extent to which children of differing language abilities can use reading experiences to glean partial knowledge of words is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to compare semantic–syntactic partial word knowledge growth of children with higher language skills (HL group; overall language standard scores of 85 or higher) to that of children with relatively lower language skills (LL group; overall receptive or expressive standard score below 85). Method Thirty-two children, 16 per group, silently read stories containing unfamiliar nouns and verbs 3 times over a 1-week period. Semantic–syntactic partial word knowledge growth was assessed after each reading and 2–3 days later to assess retention. Results Over time, both groups showed significant partial word knowledge growth, with the HL group showing significantly more growth. In addition, both groups retained knowledge several days later. Conclusion Regardless of language skill level, children benefit from multiple exposures to unfamiliar words in reading in their development and retention of semantic–syntactic partial word knowledge growth.