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Received: NovemAccepted: Published: July 13, 2017Ĭopyright: © 2017 Krishnan et al.
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PLoS ONE 12(7):Įditor: Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, Universitat de Barcelona, SPAIN These results have important implications for understanding motor/language relations in neurodevelopmental disorders.Ĭitation: Krishnan S, Alcock KJ, Carey D, Bergström L, Karmiloff-Smith A, Dick F (2017) Fractionating nonword repetition: The contributions of short-term memory and oromotor praxis are different.
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We conclude that the ability to compute and execute novel sensorimotor transformations affects the production of novel words. We found that oromotor praxis uniquely predicted nonword repetition ability in school-age children, and that the variance it accounted for was additional to that of digit span, memory for non-verbal sequences, articulatory rate (measured by oral diadochokinesis) as well as reading fluency. In the present study, we tested 35 typically developing children between the ages of 5−8 years on measures of nonword repetition, digit span, memory for non-verbal sequences, reading fluency, oromotor praxis, and oral diadochokinesis. Little is known about how children’s oromotor speed, planning and co-ordination abilities might influence their ability to repeat novel nonwords, beyond the influence of higher-level cognitive and linguistic skills.
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Yet, when children hear and then utter a word for the first time, they must transform a novel speech signal into a series of coordinated, precisely timed oral movements. Nonword repetition tasks are thought to reflect phonological short-term memory skills. The ability to reproduce novel words is a sensitive marker of language impairment across a variety of developmental disorders.
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