Ability to Imitate Language in Kindergarten Predicts Later School Achievement

Abstract

Children's ability to repeat sentences of differing grammatical structure was determined three times during kindergarten and was associated with various measures of school achievement from Grades 1 through 4. For the total sample of 56, surprisingly high positive correlations between this verbal imitative ability and achievement occurred at all grade levels. With few exceptions and especially for language subtests, the correlations were higher for girls than for boys. Incremental validity of verbal imitative ability over a measure of intelligence was demonstrated for both boys and girls, and this imitative ability identified those children at high risk of being required to repeat a grade.