ABSTRACT Purpose Sentence Repetition Tasks (SRT) have been widely used to assess early language abilities in different languages and populations. In addition, it has been proved that performance in SRTs serve as a clinical marker to detect language difficulties. However, most of the research has been conducted in English language and with children older than 4 years of age. Despite this scarcity, [1] developed a SRT for monolingual Spanish-speaking children between 2 and 4 years of age. Initial findings showed that it is a useful tool for discriminating children with different linguistic levels. In addition, the task showed concurrent validity with a nonword repetition task. In the current study we want to explore the predictive validity of this task. Methods We conducted a longitudinal study including 20 monolingual Spanish-Speaking children who were tested twice, at 33 months of age and six months later. In addition to the SRT, participants completed a nonword repetition task [2] and the Spanish version of the Merrill-Palmer-R Developmental Scales [3]. Results showed strong and positive relationships between the different tests when first assessed. We also found strong and predictive relationships between the SRT at time 1 and SRT and the Merrill-Palmer-R at time 2. Conclusion We conclude that the SRT developed [1] is a valid tool for examining early language abilities and its changes over time.

Desde los años setenta, en que se comenzara a estudiar sistemáticamente la morfología en términos psicolingüísticos, se ha venido acumulando un gran número de evidencia experimental que demuestra la relevancia del procesamiento morfológico en el reconocimiento léxico. Dicha evidencia no se refere únicamente a la población sin trastornos del lenguaje, sino que, crucialmente, también contamos con evidencia de procesamiento morfológico, y alteración del mismo, en pacientes con trastornos afásicos y lectoescritores. En este trabajo se presenta una amplia serie de trabajos que documentan el procesamiento morfológico tanto en pacientes como en población sin alteración del lenguaje y se justifica la necesidad de comenzar a incluir sistemáticamente en nuestra práctica clínica aquellas tareas que se encaminen a la rehabilitación de estas funciones morfológicas. Por último, se incluye una breve serie de tareas de intervención en este nivel morfológico que sirven para ilustrar un acercamiento a este tipo de rehabilitaciones.

The evidence concerning the role of morphology in the lexical access has been accumulated from the 70's, when the earliest systematic psycholinguistic studies were carried out. Such evidence refers not only to population without any linguistic impairment, but also to patients with aphasia or dyslexia. In this paper it is reviewed and presented the most outstanding studies showing the relevance of the morphological process, both on normal and on linguistic impaired people. Besides, it is suggested that according to the evidence published, it is fully congruent to introduce systematically in our daily clinical work those tasks devoted to train the morphological processing on patients who shows impairments on this level. Finally, some tasks in order to illustrate how to work on this topic in the clinic are included.