Nonword repetition

Uses of the task

In a clinical context, nonword repetition tasks are most often described as probing phonological (working) memory, e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley (1990). However, many authors have pointed out that successful nonword repetition must also involve other processes (such as speech segmentation, motor planning, and articulation), e.g., Snowling et al. (1991). Coady & Evans (2008) (full text available from PubMed) provide a review of the history of these tasks, and the ways these tasks have been used to study aspects of language acquisition, language processing, and speech and language disorders.

It makes sense that if a child has difficulty remembering and repeating an unfamiliar word (or nonword), the child is likely to have difficulty with learning and retaining new words, which is an important aspect of learning language. For a recent discussion of nonword repetition in the context of other skills involved in word learning in children with DLD, see McGregor et al. (2022) (open access).

Task variations and considerations

While the stimuli (the nonwords) are unfamiliar to the child, performance does depend on knowledge of the language of the test. The stimuli are designed to be plausible words, following the phonological system of the language. As an example, I would probably struggle:

• on a Polish or Russian nonword repetition task (too many adjacent consonants for my Spanglish brain)
• or on a Vietnamese or Thai task (I wouldn’t be sensitive to the tones).

As a learner becomes more proficient in a language (whether a first or later-learned language), they are likely to become better at a nonword repetition task in that language. This also means that tasks designed for older children need to be more complex (usually including more syllables and/or more complex syllable structures) to be sensitive enough to identify difficulties.

Nonword repetition tasks have been developed for several languages, many of which are included in the reviews by Schwob et al. (2021) and Ortiz (2021b).

Another strategy (also included in the above reviews) is Chiat (2015)’s quasi-universal nonword repetition task. This task includes both language-independent items, using sounds and syllable structures that occur in most languages, and language-dependent items, following the phonological structures of the language tested. There is some evidence that this may be more accurate in identifying language disorder in multilingual children, compared to language-specific nonword repetition tasks. More information about Chiat (2015)’s task and subsequent research using this task is available on the LITMUS website.

Using nonword repetition tasks in clinical practice

Ortiz (2021a) has a tutorial on the use of nonword repetition tasks with multilingual children. The tutorial is available to ASHA SIG members, and to SPA members via CINAHL.

Tip: If you are using your own stimuli, or are working off a wordlist, do work with your language (colleague, interpreter, family member, etc.) to record the stimuli ahead of time. If you’ve ever forgotten or lost your CTOPP-2 or TILLS audio files and tried to read them out live, you’ll it’s not ideal! The stimuli - particularly longer items - are designed to be difficult to process, and may take a few attempts for the examiner! If the stimuli were easier, the task probably wouldn’t have enough variance to identify difficulties in older children.

Resources

• The LITMUS website by LITMUS in Action (2025) includes some information about nonword repetition tasks, as well as details of tasks developed for multilingual children and some subsequent research that has used or adapted these tasks.