Prosodic aspects of repetition in Swedish-speaking children with developmental language disorder

<i>Purpose</i>: To examine repetition of stress and tonal word accents in real words and non-words in Swedish-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and to investigate the relation of prosodic repetition to measures of language ability. <i>Method</i>: A cross-sectional study was undertaken with 30 monolingual Swedish-speaking children with DLD, mean age 4;11 (years;months) and 29 age-matched controls, mean age 5;1, who repeated words and non-words with systematically varying prosody. Group differences for the repetition of prosodic features, and correlations between repetition and phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, were explored. <i>Result</i>: Children with DLD performed below controls on repetition of prosodic features of words and non-words. Repetition of stress and tonal word accent was not correlated with phonological production or receptive vocabulary, but a significant correlation was found between stress repetition in words and expressive grammar. <i>Conclusion</i>: Repetition of stress and tonal word accents is challenging for children with DLD acquiring Swedish as their first language, but may not be a good indicator of general language ability. Prosody should be taken into account when interpreting results from clinically used word repetition (WR) and non-word repetition (NWR) tasks.

研究目的：探究以瑞典语为母语的发育性语言障碍（developmental language disorder, DLD）儿童在真实词汇与非词汇材料中重读音节与语调词重音的重复表现，并考察韵律重复表现与语言能力测评指标之间的关联。
研究方法：本研究采用横断面设计，招募30名以瑞典语为唯一母语的DLD儿童，平均年龄为4岁11个月，以及29名年龄匹配的典型发育对照组儿童，平均年龄为5岁1个月。所有受试者需重复具有系统变化韵律特征的词汇与非词汇材料。本研究分析了两组在韵律特征重复表现上的组间差异，并探究了韵律重复表现与语音学、语法及词汇能力之间的相关性。
研究结果：相较于对照组儿童，DLD儿童在词汇与非词汇的韵律特征重复任务中表现显著更差。重读音节与语调词重音的重复表现与语音产出及接受性词汇能力无显著相关性，但词汇中的重音重复表现与表达性语法能力存在显著正相关。
研究结论：对于以瑞典语为母语的DLD儿童而言，重读音节与语调词重音的重复表现存在明显困难，但该指标或许并非通用语言能力的良好预测因子。在解读临床常用的词汇重复（word repetition, WR）与非词汇重复（non-word repetition, NWR）任务的结果时，应将韵律特征纳入考量范围。