Convergent Validity of the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Task

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Parental checklists and direct assessments of vocabulary are established measures for preschool children.
• Limited research exists on the interrelationships between various direct lexical knowledge assessments.
• Understanding these relationships is crucial for comprehensive lexical skill evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the Cross-linguistic lexical task (CLT-SK) against direct and indirect lexical measures in Slovak-speaking children aged 2-6 years.
• To examine the agreement between total scores and individual item performance across different lexical assessment methods.
• To assess the CLT-SK's utility during a critical period of lexical development.

Main Methods:

• 109 typically developing Slovak-speaking children (2-6 years) completed the CLT-SK.
• Lexical skills were also assessed using a parental checklist (Slovak adaptation of CDI), a narrative task (Internal State Terms), and a non-word repetition task.
• Item-level agreement was analyzed between the CLT-SK and the CDI.

Main Results:

• Correlational analyses revealed significant relationships between the CLT-SK and all other lexical measures.
• Total scores across different measures showed confirmed relationships.
• Agreement at the individual item level between parental judgment (CDI) and child performance (CLT-SK) was found to be poor.

Conclusions:

• The CLT-SK demonstrates validity for assessing overall lexical skills in children aged 2-6 years when total scores are considered.
• The inadequate agreement at the item level suggests caution when interpreting specific word knowledge based on individual item performance.
• The study highlights the CLT-SK's potential clinical utility due to its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility.