Measuring productive syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to develop a fine-grained measure for evaluating syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children for educational and clinical purposes as a supplement to MLU. METHOD: In total, 99 typically developing children, aged 2;0 to 5;11, living in Taipei, Taiwan, participated in this study. Spontaneous language samples were elicited in free-play situations. The first 100 intelligible utterances were coded with a newly developed scheme: the Mandarin Assessment of Productive Syntax-Revised (MAPS-R). For the examination of concurrent validity, MLU was also computed. RESULTS: Significant age-related differences were observed in both MLU and MAPS-R scores. Strong correlations were found between MLU and MAPS-R scores, confirming the validity of MAPS-R as a measure of syntactic development. MAPS-R further revealed that Mandarin-speaking children expanded noun phrases with the general classifier 'GE' very early on, followed by a locative expression. Verb expansions began with resultative complements and aspect markers. Sentences with complex predication structures, such as serial verbs/pivotal sentences, were still not widely used when the MLU value is below 4.5. CONCLUSIONS: The study showed that MAPS-R is a reliable and valid measure that can provide a rich profile of the syntactic development of Mandarin-speaking children. It can be a useful reference for speech therapists to set a baseline for developing language intervention plans and to monitor their outcome.

Narrative assessment for Cantonese-speaking children.

BACKGROUND: This study examined the narrative skills of Cantonese-speaking school-age children to fill a need for a normative language test for school-age children. PURPOSE: To provide a benchmark of the narrative skills of Cantonese-speaking children; to identify which of the microstructure components was the best predictor of age; and to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the test components. METHOD AND PROCEDURE: Data were collected from 1,120 Cantonese-speaking children between the ages of 4;10 (years;months) and 12;01, using a story-retell of a 24-frame picture series. Four narrative components (syntactic complexity, semantic score, referencing, and connective use) were measured. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Each measure reflected significant age-related differences in narrative ability. Regression analyses revealed that vocabulary and syntactic complexity were the best predictors of grade. All measures showed high sensitivity (86%-94%) but relatively low specificity (60%-90%) and modest likelihood ratio (LR) values: LR+ (2.15-9.42) and LR- (0.07-0.34). CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Narrative assessment can be standardized to be a reliable and valid instrument to assist in the identification of children with language impairment. Syntactic complexity is not only a strong predictor of grade but was also particularly vulnerable in Cantonese-speaking children with specific language impairment. Further diagnostic research using narrative analysis is warranted.