A nonword repetition task for speakers with misarticulations: the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT).
OBJECTIVE
Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) word repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. In this article, the authors (a) describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetiton Task (SRT), that eliminates this confound and (b) report findings from 3 validity studies.


METHODS
Ninety-five preschool children with speech delay and 63 with typical speech completed an assessment battery that included the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT; C. Dollaghan & T. F. Campbell, 1998) and the SRT. SRT stimuli include only 4 of the earliest occurring consonants and 1 early occurring vowel.


RESULTS
Study 1 findings indicated that the SRT eliminated the speech confound in nonword testing with speakers who misarticulate. Study 2 findings indicated that the accuracy of the SRT to identify expressive language impairment was comparable to findings for the NRT. Study 3 findings illustrated the SRT's potential to interrogate speech processing constraints underlying poor nonword repetition accuracy. Results supported both memorial and auditory-perceptual encoding constraints underlying nonword repetition errors in children with speech-language impairment.


CONCLUSIONS
The SRT appears to be a psychometrically stable and substantively informative nonword repetition task for emerging genetic research and other research with speakers who misarticulate.
Shriberg
Lawrence D
LD
Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. shriberg@waisman.wisc.edu
Lohmeier
Heather L
HL
Campbell
Thomas F
TF
Dollaghan
Christine A
CA
Green
Jordan R
JR
Moore
Christopher A
CA
D001184:Articulation Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D009042:Motivation; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013067:Speech Perception; D014706:Verbal Learning