The role of children’s verbal repetition of parents’ utterances on vocabulary growth has been well documented (Masur, 1999). Nevertheless, few studies have analyzed adults’ and children’s spontaneous verbal repetition around the second birthday distinguishing between the types of repetition. We analyzed longitudinally Spanish-speaking parent-child dyads during spontaneous interaction at 21, 24 and 30 months. Linguistic level was measured using the Spanish version of the MacArthur CDI (López-Ornat et al., 2005). Children’s and adults’ repetitions are about 17% of the speech. Children repeated adults’ utterances in a reduced manner whereas adults produced more extended repetitions. Adults’ rate of repetition predicted children’s linguistic level at 30 months. Children’s rate of repetition did not predict linguistic level. These results suggest that parents adapt their speech to children’s communicative abilities. Since children’s rate of repetition did not predict linguistic level, we suggest that verbal imitation plays an indirect and complex role in communicative development.

中文翻译：

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幼儿与成人对话中的自发言语重复：对讲西班牙语的两岁儿童的纵向研究

儿童口头重复父母话语对词汇增长的作用已得到充分证明（Masur，1999）。然而，很少有研究分析成人和儿童在两岁生日前后的自发言语重复，以区分重复的类型。我们在 21、24 和 30 个月的自发互动期间纵向分析了讲西班牙语的亲子对。语言水平使用 MacArthur CDI 的西班牙语版本进行测量（López-Ornat 等，2005）。儿童和成人的重复大约占演讲的 17%。儿童以减少的方式重复成年人的话语，而成年人则产生更多的重复重复。成人的重复率预测了 30 个月时儿童的语言水平。儿童的重复率并不能预测语言水平。这些结果表明，父母会根据孩子的交际能力调整他们的语言。由于儿童的重复率不能预测语言水平，我们认为口头模仿在交际发展中起着间接和复杂的作用。