Exploring the effect of L1, linguistic, and non-linguistic variables on non-word repetition performance of monolingual and multilingual preschool children in Germany

Increasing linguistic diversity in society means that many children acquire the majority language as an additional language. An important aspect of early language development is phonological processing, yet the factors underlying individual differences in monolingual and multilingual children in these abilities remain poorly understood. To investigate these individual differences, the present study examined nonword repetition (NWR) performance in 793 children, including monolingual (n = 637) and multilingual (n = 156, 18 L1s) preschoolers (3-6 years) in Germany. We used mixed-effects models to investigate the role of lexical linguistic distance to German, German exposure, receptive vocabulary, and morphological skills on NWR while controlling for child age, sex, cognitive ability, and parental education, with preschool as random interceptsResults showed an association of receptive vocabulary with NWR performance only. These findings suggest that NWR performance in preschool children may be relatively independent of individual differences in linguistic background and exposure, while being moderately associated with lexical development.