title: The sentence repetition task: a powerful diagnostic tool for French children with specific language impairment.
abstract: This study assesses the diagnostic accuracy and construct validity of a sentence repetition task that is commonly used for the identification of French children with specific language impairment (SLI). Thirty-four school-aged children with a confirmed, diagnostically based diagnosis of SLI, and 34 control children matched on age and nonverbal abilities performed the sentence repetition task. Two general scoring measures took into account the verbatim repetition of the sentence and the number of words accurately repeated. Moreover, five other scoring measures were applied to their answers in order to separately take into account their respect of lexical items, functional items, syntax, verb morphology, and the general meaning of the sentence. Results show good to high levels of sensitivity and specificity at the three cut-off points for all scoring measures. A principal component analysis revealed two factors. Scoring measures for the respect of functional words, syntax and verb morphology provided the largest loadings to the first factor, while scoring measures for the respect of lexical words and general semantics provided the largest loadings to the second factor. Sentence repetition appears to be a valuable tool to identify SLI in French children, and the ability to repeat sentences correctly is supported by two factors: a morphosyntactic factor and a lexical factor.
authors.affiliation: University of Liège, Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behaviour, Belgium. Electronic address: al.leclercq@ulg.ac.be.
authors.forename: Anne-Lise
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Leclercq
authors.affiliation: University of Poitiers and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.
authors.forename: Pauline
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Quémart
authors.affiliation: University of Liège, Department of Education, Belgium.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Magis
authors.affiliation: University of Liège, Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behaviour, Belgium.
authors.forename: Christelle
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Maillart
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
keywords: Construct validity; Sensibility; Sentence repetition; Specific language impairment; Specificity