What is it about?
This paper is about whether better nonword repetition skills in young children aid them help new vocabulary, or vice versa. Using an experimental technique suited to address reciprocal relationships in longitudinal data, we demonstrate that there are mutual relationships between the two skills in a large sample of Dutch-speaking children followed from 2 to 5 years of age.
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Why is it important?
The current study looks at much younger children than previous study, which is important in light of existing theories that predict stronger relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary for younger than for older children. The current study used a type of statistical modeling (i.e., Latent Change Score modeling) that is better suited to address questions about bidirectionality in longitudinal data than the techniques used previously.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure as it involved a collaboration between colleagues with very different areas of expertise. The article combines a set of statistical techniques that enable one to look at relationships between rapidly developing skills, and as such, presents a fruitful approach to studying development in young children. I hope it is inspiring to other people to conduct similar analyses on their datasets.
Josje Verhagen
University of Amsterdam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reciprocal relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary during the preschool years., Developmental Psychology, February 2019, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/dev0000702.
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