Abstract
Background Sentence repetition performance is attracting increasing interest as a valuable clinical marker for primary (or specific) language impairment (LI) in both monolingual and bilingual populations. Multiple aspects of memory appear to contribute to sentence repetition performance, but non-verbal memory has not yet been considered.
Aims To explore the relationship between a measure of non-verbal auditory working memory (NVWM) and sentence repetition performance in a sample of bilingual children with LI.
Methods & Procedures Forty-seven school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children with LI completed sentence repetition and non-word repetition tasks in both Spanish and English as well as an NVWM task. Hierarchical multiple linear regression was used to predict sentence repetition in each language using age, non-word repetition and NVWM.
Outcomes & Results NVWM predicted unique variance in sentence repetition performance in both languages after accounting for chronological age and language-specific phonological memory, as measured by non-word repetition.
Conclusions & Implications Domain-general memory resources play a unique role in sentence repetition performance in children with LI. Non-verbal working memory weaknesses may contribute to the poor performance of children with LI on sentence repetition tasks.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 631-636 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders |
Volume | 49 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 1 2014 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Working memory
- bilingualism
- developmental language impairment
- non-linguistic processing
- school-aged children
- specific language impairment