Do you hear what I hear? An analysis of the relationship between phonological processing and grammar

This study evaluated how phonological working memory, as measured by a nonword repetition task, relates to children's ability to produce grammatical structures after hearing a model in a grammatical priming experimental paradigm. Secondary questions examined the relationship between the ability to be primed for modeled grammatical structures and performance on measures of morphosyntax knowledge, as well as the relationship between phonological working memory and grammatical production. Sixty-nine bilingual Spanish-English children with and without language impairment were included in the bi-variate correlation analyses. Results indicated a very weak and non-significant correlation between grammatical priming and nonword repetition, a moderate and significant positive correlation between morphosyntax and grammatical priming, and a small and significant positive correlation between morphosyntax and nonword repetition.