Measurement Properties of Mean Length of Utterance in School-Age Children

Autor/in	Potratz, Jill R.
Titel	Measurement Properties of Mean Length of Utterance in School-Age Children
Quelle	In: Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 53 (2022) 4, S.1088-1100 (13 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Potratz, Jill R.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0161-1461
Schlagwörter	Measurement; Speech; Speech Impairments; Language Impairments; Elementary School Students; Morphemes; Syntax; Age Groups; Child Language; Language Acquisition; Construct Validity + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Messverfahren; Speaking; Sprechen; Speech impairment; Speech handicap; Speech handicaps; Language handicps; Language impairments; Sprachbehinderung; Speech disorder; Speech disorders; Speech disabilities; Speech disability; Speech impairments; Language handicaps; Morphem; Age grop; Altersgruppe; 'Children''s language'; Kindersprache; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb
Abstract	Purpose: Mean length of utterance (MLU) is one of the most widely reported measures of syntactic development in the developmental literature, but its responsiveness in young school-age children's language has been questioned, and it has been shown to correlate with nonsyntactic measures. This study tested the extent to which MLU shows measurement properties of responsiveness and construct validity when applied to language elicited from elementary school children. Method: Thirty-two typically developing children in two age groups (5 and 8 years) provided four short language samples each. Language samples were elicited in a question-answer context and a narrative context. MLU was calculated with both morpheme and word counts. Other established measures of syntactic complexity (clausal density [CD], developmental level [D-Level], mean length of clause [MLC]) and lexical diversity (lexical density, moving-average type-token ratio, number of different words) were also calculated. Results: Linear mixed-effects analyses revealed that MLU varied systematically with discourse context and children's age group. The syntactic measures, CD and MLC, were found to vary systematically with MLU. None of the lexical diversity measures varied systematically with MLU. Conclusion: Results suggest that MLU is a responsive and valid measure of children's syntactic development across age and discourse context during the early school-age years. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: lshss@asha.org; Web site: http://lshss.pubs.asha.org
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01