Design and validation of a Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test for children aged 4–6 years

Abstract

Syntax has a high importance among linguistic parameters, and syntax-related problems are the most common in language disorders. Therefore, the present study aimed to design a Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test for Iranian children in the age group of 4–6 years and to determine its validity and reliability. First, the target morphosyntactic structures among Persian-speaking 4–6-year-old children were extracted, and items related to each structure were designed. After both content and face validity were determined and modifications were applied, the initial version of the test was performed on 100 children. The final version of the test was performed on 400 eligible, typically-developing children selected using the random (cluster) method. Psychometric properties investigated in this study include construct validity (convergent validity and age and gender discriminative validity) and reliability (test–retest, inter-rater, and internal consistency). Content validity of each item was between 0.8 and 1, and content validity of the whole scale was 0.86. Exploration of construct validity suggested that age and gender affect the test scores. Convergent validity was found to be significant. Results of test–retest, and inter-rater reliability were significantly correlated and the test was found to have high internal consistency. The Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test with 40 items is the first reliable and valid scale that exclusively and accurately evaluates morphosyntactic characteristics of 4–6-year-old Persian-speaking children.

Cognitive and language intervention in primary language impairment: Studying the effectiveness of working memory training and direct language intervention on expansion of grammar and working memory capacities

“…The participants were also re-evaluated by these tests after the treatment phases to verify the effects of the treatment programmes. The Persian syntax comprehension test (Mohamadi et al, 2015) and the photographic expressive Persian grammar test (Haresabadi et al, 2016) were used to evaluate the effects of both training programmes on the participant’s receptive and expressive morpho-syntactic skills. The Persian syntax comprehension test is a picture selection test that encompasses 96 items and four pictures (one target picture and three distractor pictures) for each item and assesses the comprehension of 4- to 6-year-old children on 24 important syntactic structures of the Persian language.…”

Percentage of Consonants Correct for 3-5 Years Old Kurdish-Speaking Children With Middle Kurmanji-Mukryani Dialect

“…Children meeting the following conditions were selected for the study: a) Age between three to five years (36 months to total 60 months); b) Monolingual Kurdish speaking children with parents whose first language was Kurdish; c) Having healthy oro-facial structure and function (informal assessment by the examiner); d) Normal psychomotor development (research based questionnaire); and, e) Parent's completion of the consent form for the child's participation in the study. Children who met the following criteria were excluded from the study: a) Having history of the delay in the child's language development (informal assessment by the examiner and the research made questionnaire); b) Having vision, hearing, mental, emotional, and psychological deficiencies, or history of head injuries or obvious neurological disorders, such as seizures, epilepsy, and autism spectrum disorders (research made questionnaire); and, c) Having a history of speech therapy [6,17,37].…”