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Beyond global differences between monolingual and bilingual children on the nonword repetition task: retention skills for phonemes’ identity and serial order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2017

KIRSTEN SCHRAEYEN ,
WIM VAN DER ELST ,
ASTRID GEUDENS ,
POL GHESQUIÈRE  and
DOMINIEK SANDRA
KIRSTEN SCHRAEYEN*
Affiliation:
Thomas More University College, Department of Speech Language Therapy and Audiology, Research group Language and Learning, Antwerp, Belgium University of Leuven, Parenting and Special Education Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Leuven, Belgium University of Antwerp, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Antwerp, Belgium
WIM VAN DER ELST
Affiliation:
Hasselt University, Institute for Biostatistics and Statstical Bioinformatics, Hasselt, Belgium
ASTRID GEUDENS
Affiliation:
Thomas More University College, Department of Education & Department of Speech language Therapy and Audiology, Research group Language and Reading Education, Antwerp, Belgium
POL GHESQUIÈRE
Affiliation:
University of Leuven, Parenting and Special Education Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Leuven, Belgium
DOMINIEK SANDRA
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Antwerp, Belgium
*
Address for correspondence: Kirsten Schraeyen, Molenstraat 8, 2018 Antwerp, BelgiumKirsten.schraeyen@thomasmore.be
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Abstract

This study compared NRT-performance in monolingual Dutch and bilingual Turkish–Dutch third-graders using a Dutch Nonword Repetition Task (NRT). Several novel response analyses at the phoneme level were applied to further understand the earlier reported overall accuracy differences in NRT-performance between bilinguals and monolinguals. Analyses in which the retention of phonemes and the retention of their serial order were disentangled revealed that monolinguals outperform bilinguals with respect to the retention of the phonemes themselves. However, both groups did not differ in their retention of the serial order of correctly recalled phonemes. Furthermore, this study confirms that expressive vocabulary skills do affect overall NRT-performance. The results are discussed in light of current short-term memory (STM) models and the role of long-term phonological knowledge in NRT tasks.

Keywords

nonword repetitionbilingualismserial orderphonological knowledgeshort-term memory
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 403 - 418
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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