Abstract

This research aimed to establish the association between repetition skills and lexical development. A longitudinal design was used that included measurements at 21, 24 and 30 months. Twelve infants from the region of La Araucanía participated, who were evaluated with the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory MCDI 2 and word and nonword repetition tasks. The results indicate that there is a significant relationship between expressive vocabulary and repetition, especially of nonwords. A main effect was obtained from the variables lexical status, syllable length and time, in addition to an interactive effect between the last two. Individual variability was observed in the sample. The results obtained are discussed in the light of similar studies on linguistic development and repetition of words and nonwords.