[Expressive vocabulary: comparison of 2 psychological test procedures in kindergarten children]

Fifty-five subjects were drawn from a population of average kindergarden children. Their ages ranged between 3; 4 and 4; 11 years. Two vocabulary tests were administered individually in a quiet room to each subject. A new instrument for testing the active vocabulary (Subtest "vocabulary" of the K-ABC, 1991) was compared with an established one (AWST 3-6, 1979) to see whether they agree sufficiently for the new to replace the old. Raw scores were computed according to the test instructions for each correct response and transformed into normscores. These were compared, and both tests correlated with r = 0.69 (p = 0.0001). So, the K-ABC-Subtest "vocabulary" may be administered in the first diagnostic setting. The mean of the differences of both vocabulary tests is 0.1; yet, in some cases large differences between the results of both vocabulary tests are to be expected, because the differences vary in the broad range from -15.5 to +15.7 (= +/- 2 SD). Therefore the more detailed AWST 3-6 should be used to assess the amount of active vocabulary in children with a low norm score in the K-ABC-Subtest "vocabulary".