Exploring vowel errors produced in nonword repetition in children with speech and language disorders.

Background: Accurate nonword repetition (NWR) is contingent on many underlying skills, including encoding, memory and motor planning and programming. Though vowel errors are frequently associated with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), several recent studies have found that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) produce high rates of vowel errors in NWR tasks.

Aims: This retrospective analysis explored whether the overall frequency and types of vowel errors produced in NWR distinguish children with DLD, children with CAS, children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and children with typical development (TD).