Non-word repetition in children with cleft palate: a relation between phonological memory and vocabulary

Abstract

The hypothesis that the size of the vocabulary of 2-year-old children with cleft palate is related to their phonological memory is tested with a non-word repetition (NWR) task and a parent questionnaire. NWR accuracy, real-word repetition accuracy, receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary were assessed in 13 children between 25 and 30 months with cleft palate and 14 typically developing children between 25 and 28 months. The results show that children with cleft palate have smaller receptive vocabularies than typically developing children. NWR accuracy and real-word repetition accuracy were poorer in children with cleft palate. No differences were found between real-word and non-word repetition accuracy and no correlations were found between vocabulary and NWR in children with cleft palate. This indicates that children with cleft palate produce less accurate independent of their vocabulary size. Several possibilities are discussed to explain these results: a phonological memory deficit, a phonological perception deficit or an articulatory deficit. These findings require more research to the cause of this poor repetition accuracy and its influence on vocabulary.