The validation of repetition tasks to measure language proficiency in preschoolers

Abstract

Given that communication is essential for academic learning and social development, the early identification of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is necessary in order to provide early intervention. In addition, because parents have a lot of experience with their children in a variety of naturalistic situations, parent report is often used as a reliable measure of language screening. Many standardized parent-reported developmental screening tools can help determine if a child is or is not meeting developmental milestones for language development. However, at this time, these tools cannot predict which children will go on to have a DLD with a high degree of accuracy.

The goal of this longitudinal study is to determine whether parents’ responses on standardized questionnaires measuring markers of DLD can differentiate typically developing preschool children from those with DLD. Preliminary results from the first year of the study will be reported: the correlation between results on two standardized questionnaires and two repetition tasks. Forty-four preschool children (x̄ = 36.8 months; SD = 3.97) were assessed in either English or French. Results revealed that for the English-speaking participants (n = 30), responses on the standardized questionnaires were correlated with performance on one repetition task, Sentence Repetition. No significant relationships were observed for French-speaking participants (n = 14). These results suggest that the use of these questionnaires in identifying children with DLD during the preschool period may be appropriate for English-speaking children.