Alternative tense and agreement morpheme measures for assessing grammatical deficits during the preschool period.
OBJECTIVE
P. A. Hadley and H. Short (2005) developed a set of measures designed to assess the emerging diversity and productivity of tense and agreement (T/A) morpheme use by 2-year-olds. The authors extended 2 of these measures to the preschool years to evaluate their utility in distinguishing children with specific language impairment (SLI) from their typically developing (TD) peers.


METHODS
Spontaneous speech samples from 55 children (25 with SLI, 30 TD) at 2 different age levels (4;0-4;6 [years;months] and 5;0-5;6) were analyzed, using a traditional T/A morphology composite that assessed accuracy, and the Hadley and Short measures of Tense Marker Total (assessing diversity of T/A morpheme use) and Productivity Score (assessing productivity of major T/A categories).


RESULTS
All 3 measures showed acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, similar differences in levels of productivity across T/A categories were seen in the TD and SLI groups.


CONCLUSIONS
The Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score measures seem to have considerable utility for preschool-age children, in that they provide information about specific T/A morphemes and major T/A categories that are not distinguished using the traditional composite measure. The findings are discussed within the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning account.
Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Allison
A
Gladfelter
Laurence B
LB
Leonard
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception; D014825:Vocabulary