Age Variation in First-Language Acquisition and Phonological Development

Discrimination and Repetition of Nonwords in a Group of Italian Preschoolers

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7903803
AutoresVincenzo Galatà (0000-0003-1075-4984), Gaia Lucarini (0000-0003-0480-1051), Maria Palmieri, Claudio Zmarich (0000-0003-0384-4041)
Año2025
Volumen10
Número10
Páginas249
Fecha de publicación2025-09-26
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguages (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages10100249
OpenAlexW4414554257
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas85

This contribution provides new data on Italian first language acquisition and phonological development in preschool children. In total, 104 3- to 6;4-year-old typically developing Italian children were tested with two novel nonword tasks tackling the Italian consonantal system: one for repetition (NWR) and one for discrimination (NWD). NWR data were analyzed in terms of repetition accuracy, featural characteristics, and phonological processes, while NWD was analyzed according to signal detection theory (i.e., A-prime and d-prime) and in terms of discrimination accuracy. The results show the significant role of age on children’s repetition and discrimination abilities: as the children grow older, all the scores improve and the number of errors declines. No complete overlap is found between what children can produce and what they can discriminate, which is in line with what has already been documented in other languages. The findings contribute to the state of the art on the Italian language and provide new perspectives on some methodological issues specific to this language

Language Development and Disorders · Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition · Phonetics and Phonology Research