What is it about?
This research investigates the construct validity of three novel "sentence-focused diversity measures"—intransitive verb diversity, transitive verb diversity, and third-person (3P) subject diversity—as indicators of early language development in toddlers. The study compared late-talking (LT) toddlers with typically developing (TD) peers and examined how the new measures related to traditional language sample measures, specifically mean length of utterance (MLU) and number of different words (NDW). The study validated the construct validity of these measures in two ways. First, the sentence-focused measures were effective in differentiating LT and TD toddlers. Second, the sentence-focused measures were strongly associated to the traditional language sample measures.
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Why is it important?
The study found a significantly stronger association between intransitive verb diversity and 3P subject diversity. This evidence provides new evidence indicating that intransitive verbs play a crucial role in the emergence of more diverse simple sentence in early language development. The findings of this study show that these measures have potential for improving the earlier identification of toddlers at risk for developmental language disorder (DLD).
Perspectives
In this study, we found the same pattern of association between intransitive verb diversity and 3P subject diversity previously reported for a small sample of toddlers with elevated risk for DLD. When findings replicate across different samples, it gives us greater confidence in the pattern of results. Given the new evidence supporting this link, I encourage clinicians to assess children’s intransitive verb lexicon and target early intransitive verbs like eat, drink, sleep, play, go, come, fall, fit, etc in simple sentence as they begin to combine words.
Professor Pamela A Hadley
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluating the Construct Validity of Sentence-Focused Diversity Measures With Late-Talking Toddlers and Same-Age Peers, Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, April 2025, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2024_jslhr-24-00558.
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