Do Individual Differences in Lexical Representations or Speech Output Account for Relations Between Nonword Repetition or Vocabulary?

Nonword repetition tasks have often been used as measures of phonological memory. However, there is considerable evidence that these tasks may rely heavily on lexical knowledge (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998; Treiman, Goswami, & Bruck, 1990), and the role of speech output has also been identified as a potential confounding factor in nonword repetition performance (Hulme & Snowling, 1992). A new nonword repetition task was devised for the current study; the criteria used for generating the nonword stimuli incorporated the findings of Dollaghan and Campbell (1998) and Treiman, Goswami, and Bruck (1990). Relations between this new task and word-level reading and vocabulary were compared to two other nonword repetition tasks, one that adhered to about fifty percent of the criteria, and one that adhered to virtually none of the criteria. A nonword comparison task, with stimuli also adhering to the criteria, was also administered, and the relations between this task and word-level reading and vocabulary were compared to those of the nonword repetition task performance to determine the influence of speech output.