Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Bauru School of Dentistry, University of São Paulo, Bauru, SP, Brazil.
J Appl Oral Sci. 2009;17 Suppl(spe):63-8. doi: 10.1590/s1678-77572009000700011.
Evaluation of the phonological working memory (PWM) through repetition of nonwords can provide important information on the linguistic abilities of children, thus differentiating those with and without communication disorders.
The aim of this study was to obtain reference values in the Nonword Repetition Test (NWRT) in order to investigate the performance of children without language disorders concerning this type of memory.
The study was conducted on 480 normal children of both genders aged 4 years to 8 years and 11 months, attending preschool and elementary school. The NWRT consisted of repeating 20 (children up to 4 years) or 40 (for children aged 5 years or more) invented words with 2 to 5 syllables. The results were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. Comparison between ages and between the number of syllables in nonwords was performed by the Tukey's multiple-comparison test and one-way analysis of variance, at a significance value of p<0.05.
There was statistically significant difference (p<0.05) in performance between children of different age groups, except between 7- and 8-year-olds. The analysis also showed statistically significant difference (p<0.05) in the number of syllables between the different age groups.
The reference values obtained indicated an improvement in performance with the increase of age of children, indicating an improvement in the storage of verbal material in the PWM. The performance was worsened with the increase in the number of syllables in words, demonstrating that the greater the number of syllables, the greater is the difficulty in storing verbal material.
通过重复非单词来评估语音工作记忆（PWM）可以提供有关儿童语言能力的重要信息，从而区分有和无沟通障碍的儿童。
本研究旨在获得非单词重复测试（NWRT）的参考值，以调查无语言障碍儿童在这种类型的记忆方面的表现。
该研究共纳入 480 名正常儿童，包括 4 至 8 岁 11 个月的男女儿童，他们在学龄前和小学就读。NWRT 由重复 20 个（4 岁以下儿童）或 40 个（5 岁及以上儿童）有 2 到 5 个音节的虚构单词组成。结果进行描述性统计分析。通过 Tukey 多重比较检验和单因素方差分析比较不同年龄组和非单词中音节数之间的差异，显著性水平为 p<0.05。
除了 7 至 8 岁年龄组外，不同年龄组儿童的表现存在统计学差异（p<0.05）。分析还显示，不同年龄组之间的音节数存在统计学差异（p<0.05）。
获得的参考值表明，随着儿童年龄的增长，表现有所提高，这表明 PWM 中言语材料的存储能力有所提高。随着单词音节数的增加，表现变差，这表明音节数越多，存储言语材料的难度越大。
