Grammatical comprehension assessment: the picture avoidance strategy

This study investigated children's picture avoidance responses on a paired sentences, grammatical comprehension test. Such responses involved the nonselection of a particular referent picture for a stimulus sentence when the picture had been selected as a referent for a previous stimulus sentence. Forty-four children between three and seven years of age were administered a version of the Receptive subtest of the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test. Half of the sample was administered the test under its standardized "single pass-paired sentences" procedure. The remaining children were administered the test under a "double pass-paired sentences" procedure (i.e., a procedure similar to that employed on the Miller-Yoder Test of Grammatical Comprehension). As predicted, the single pass-paired sentences version of the test elicited significantly more picture avoidance responses from the children. The consequence of children's differential picture avoidance responses on a single pass-paired sentences test is discussed with respect to different scoring criteria.