PURPOSE The finite verb morphology composite (FVMC) is a valid measure for charting children's tense development and for differentiating children with and without language impairment during preschool and early elementary years. However, it is unclear whether FVMC scores vary as a function of language sample elicitation contexts. The current study evaluated the performance on FVMC in preschool-aged children across different language sampling contexts. METHOD Participants were 38 English-speaking children who were between the ages of 3 and 4 years and below the mastery level of tense usage in three language sampling contexts, including conversation (free-play), picture description, and narratives (story retell). FVMC from each sampling context was computed by calculating the overall accuracy of copula be, auxiliary be, third-person singular present -s, and past tense -ed combined. A linear mixed-effects model comparison was carried out to determine the effect of sampling context on FVMC scores. RESULTS After controlling for child age, mean length of utterance, and the number of obligatory contexts for FVMC scoring, FVMC scores were significantly higher in conversation than in picture description and narratives. In addition, FVMC scores across the three sampling contexts were significantly correlated (rs ≥ .62, p < .001). CONCLUSIONS Although children's performance on FVMC relative to each other was quite stable across sampling contexts, FVMC scores may vary with sampling contexts. As compared to picture description and narratives, conversation may not adequately capture the limitation in preschoolers' tense development that is important for therapeutic planning.

中文翻译：

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采样上下文对学龄前儿童有限动词形态综合分数的影响。


目的 有限动词形态复合体 （FVMC） 是绘制儿童紧张发展以及区分学龄前和小学早期有和没有语言障碍的儿童的有效度量。然而，目前尚不清楚 FVMC 分数是否随语言样本引出环境而变化。目前的研究评估了不同语言采样背景下学龄前儿童对 FVMC 的表现。方法 参与者是 38 名说英语的儿童，年龄在 3 至 4 岁之间，在三种语言抽样环境中低于时态使用的掌握水平，包括对话（自由游戏）、图片描述和叙述（故事复述）。通过计算 copula be、助动 be、第三人称单数现在时 -s 和过去时 -ed 组合的总体准确性来计算每个采样上下文的 FVMC。进行了线性混合效应模型比较，以确定采样环境对 FVMC 分数的影响。结果 在控制了儿童年龄、平均话语长度和 FVMC 评分的强制性上下文数量后，对话中的 FVMC 分数显着高于图片描述和叙述。此外，三个采样背景下的 FVMC 分数显着相关 （rs ≥ .62，p < .001）。结论 尽管儿童在 FVMC 上相对的表现在抽样环境中相当稳定，但 FVMC 分数可能因抽样环境而异。与图片描述和叙述相比，对话可能无法充分捕捉学龄前儿童紧张发展的局限性，这对治疗计划很重要。