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Nonword repetition tasks have been proposed as a measure to identify developmental language disorder in diverse populations. However, previous studies have shown that bilingual children who speak a non-English language at home might be penalized for production errors influenced by their first language. The current study explores the properties of an alternative scoring system that accounts for the influence of the first language. Ten typically-developing Mandarin-English bilingual children completed a nonword repetition task as well as a battery of additional language assessments. We created an alternative scoring system based on errors predicted by the influence of Mandarin phonology. We then compared properties of the original and the alternative scoring systems, including the relations between nonword repetition task score and other factors (including age, home language exposure and standardized test performances) as well as the score distributions within this group of typically-developing children. Results show that most phonemic errors can be predicted by L1 and the alternative scoring system minimizes the relationship between home language exposure and nonword repetition task score. However, possible ceiling effects represent a disadvantage. |
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