The temporal reliability of Brown's mean length of utterance (MLU-M) measure with post-stage V Children

The temporal reliability of Brown's MLU-M was investigated with 30 normally developing children, 10 in each of three age groups: 3:6-4:6, 5:6-6:6, and 8:6-9:6 years. All children obtained MLU-Ms greater than 4.0, which placed them beyond Brown's Stage V of language learning. Language samples were evoked from these subjects on each of three consecutive days using picture stimuli. The reliability estimates indicated lack of stability for individual and average MLU-M values.