The effect of linguistic knowledge and Korean phonotactic probability on nonword repetition and fast mapping ability

Objectives: The present study aimed to discover whether specific variables correlated with performance of non-word repetition (NWR) and fast mapping (FM) in each group, and whether the mean score of correct response per non-word correlated with each biphone phonotactic probability (PP) in the NWR and FM comprehension task of each group. Methods: Fifteen children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 20 age-matched children with normal language (NL) from 4- to 6-year-old participated in this study. We performed NWR and FM tasks according to wordlikeness by adjusting biphone PP. Two-way mixed ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. Results: The main effect of the group was significant in all tasks. In NWR and FM comprehension, the main effect of wordlikeness was significant. There was no interaction in any task. Also, the SLI group showed significant correlation between NWR, age, receptive, and expressive vocabulary. The NL and SLI groups showed significant correlation between mean score per non-word item and each non-word biphone PP in the NWR, and only the SLI group showed significant correlation between mean score per non-word item and non-word biphone PP in FM comprehension. Conclusion: The results indicate that Korean language is also affected by PP. In addition, an advantage of high wordlikeness is that the NWR and FM, which are known to tap underlying language processing, are affected by Korean PP, and that both NL and SLI are influenced by linguistic knowledge. These results suggest the need to consider PP in evaluation and intervention with Korean non-words.