Four Grammatic Completion Measures of Language Ability

Abstract

Sixty normally hearing children from preschool, kindergarten, or second grade each received four commonly used grammatic completion measures: The Berry-Talbott Developmental Guide to Comprehension of Grammar, the Grammatic Closure subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, the Grammatic Completion subtest of the Test of Language Development-Primary, and the Morphological Rules section of the Bankson Language Screening Text. Moderately high overall correlations were found among the four measures. Older children scored higher than younger children. Performance of females and males was similar. Patterns of association among tests remained stable even when effects of age were removed using partial correlations or when standard scores were examined. Children missed the highest proportion of items on the Berry-Talbott test and the lowest proportion of items on the Bankson Screening Test.