A comparison of Spanish language samples elicited by the investigator in the clinic and by the mothers in the home

Abstract

A common denominator to most studies concerning language acquisition is the elicitation of a corpus of a given number of spontaneous utterances which are representative of the child's linguistic maturity.This procedure, also called language sampling, is used daily by speech clinicians in their efforts to evaluate a child's language maturity and complexity.Language samples are elicited and analyzed in the Hispanic countries without the availability of specific norms or procedures.Research considering the effects of different variables on the language 2 sample, i.e., the possible differences between language samples elicited by mothers in the home setting and by clinicians in the clinic or school setting, is non-existent.The primary purpose of the present study was to compare the quality of spontaneous language samples elicited from twelve low socioeconomic, normally developing, migrant Spanish-speaking subjects by their mothers in the home and by this investigator in the clinic. The subjects ranged in age from three years, one month to six years, nine months.The essential question sought to determine if the comparison of language samples elicited in the home by the mothers and the language samples. elicited in the clinic by the investigator yielded significant differences in syntactical language development as measured by the Developmental Assessment of Spanish Granunar (~) (Toronto, 1972(Toronto, , 1976. Comparison of DASG total scores and DASG individual category scores was made between the home and the clinic samples. Mean scores were determined for the subjects' performances in each setting. Differences between the means of the different results were analyzed utilizing a t-test. In addition, t-test analysis was conducted to determine the significance level of DASG scores when compared by age and sex in the clinic and in the home, and by order of examination.Results of the study indicated no statistically significant differences between the samples elicited in the clinic and in the home by the investigator and the mothers, although the subjects utilized more complex sentences in the home than in the clinic as demonstrated by the higher scores obtained in the Indefinite Pronouns and Noun Modifiers, Personal Pronouns, Primary Verbs, and Secondary Verbs categories. No statistically significant differences were found between sexes and the comparison of ~ scores by order of examination. Results of the comparison between age groups indicated a statistically significant difference in favor of the oldest group (Group IV; age range 6.8 to 6.9) when compared to a younger group (Group III; age range 5.2 to 5.10). A comparison of amount of responses elicited in a 15-minute period indicated a trend in favor of the investigator. 3 The results of the present study appear to support findings of studies conducted with English-speaking subjects. Although the speechlanguage clinician may elicit greater amounts of speech, there is a slight difference in favor of the quality of the language samples elicited by the mother in the ...