Faculty of Education, Institute of Psychology and Speech Therapy Studies, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2013 Jan;48(1):78-89. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-6984.2012.00189.x. Epub 2012 Nov 2.
Non-word repetition (NWR) tasks have been found to correlate with language skills and to discriminate between groups of typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI) across languages.
The main aim was to develop an easily-administered NWR screening test that could discriminate between Slovak-speaking TD children and children with SLI. The second aim was to establish if the novel scoring methods for NWR tasks were equally effective at differentiating between the TD versus SLI groups. As Slovak vowels are not reduced in unstressed syllables, it was also sought to establish whether scoring vowels (in addition to the consonants usually assessed in English language tests) would be informative.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: The paper evaluated the performance of a new NWR task for Slovak-speaking children. Study 1 compared the performance of 60 TD children in three age groups: 3-year-olds (N = 20), 4-your-olds (N = 20) and 5-year-olds (N = 20). Five types of scoring methods were examined: whole-item, number of syllables, syllable structure, consonants, and vowels. Study 2 compared performance on the NWR task administered in Study 1 across three groups of child participants: an SLI group (N = 16), a TD age-matched group (N = 16), and a TD language-matched group (N = 14).
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Study 1 found an age effect in the TD sample for three out of five of the scoring methods tested (number of syllables, syllable structure, and consonants). Study 2 showed that all five of the scoring methods discriminated between: (1) the group of children with SLI and the TD language-matched (TDLM) sample and (2) the group of children with SLI and the TD age-matched (TDAM) group.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The novel NWR tool reliably differentiated between children with SLI and TD children. Scoring cut-off points which demonstrated high rates of success at verifying true-positives (93.75%) and true-negatives (100%) are provided. The most informative scoring methods for Slavic languages (whole-item scoring and vowels correct) are identified and discussed.
非词重复（NWR）任务已被发现与语言技能相关，并能在不同语言的典型发育儿童（TD）和特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童之间进行区分。
主要目的是开发一种易于管理的 NWR 筛查测试，以区分斯洛伐克语的 TD 儿童和 SLI 儿童。第二个目的是确定用于区分 TD 与 SLI 组的新的 NWR 任务评分方法是否同样有效。由于斯洛伐克语中的元音在非重读音节中不弱化，因此还试图确定在辅音（通常在英语语言测试中评估）之外评估元音是否会提供信息。
本文评估了一种新的 NWR 任务在斯洛伐克语儿童中的表现。研究 1 比较了三个年龄组的 60 名 TD 儿童的表现：3 岁儿童（N=20）、4 岁儿童（N=20）和 5 岁儿童（N=20）。研究了五种评分方法：整体项目、音节数、音节结构、辅音和元音。研究 2 比较了在研究 1 中对 NWR 任务的表现，涉及三组儿童参与者：SLI 组（N=16）、TD 年龄匹配组（N=16）和 TD 语言匹配组（N=14）。
研究 1 发现 TD 样本中的年龄效应在五种评分方法中的三种中（音节数、音节结构和辅音）。研究 2 表明，五种评分方法均能区分：（1）SLI 组和 TD 语言匹配（TDLM）样本；（2）SLI 组和 TD 年龄匹配（TDAM）组。
新的 NWR 工具可靠地区分了 SLI 儿童和 TD 儿童。提供了高准确率（93.75%）和真阴性（100%）验证的得分切点。确定并讨论了适用于斯拉夫语言的最具信息量的评分方法（整体项目评分和元音正确）。
