Date of Award

5-1-1976

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Communication Sciences & Disorders

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between the performance of normally-developing subjects and educable mentally handicapped (EMH) subjects on standardized measures of vocabulary recognition and syntax.

Nine male and nine female normally-developing subjects, with a mean age of five years seven months, and ten male and seven female educable mentally handicapped subjects, with a mean age of nine years six months, participated in this study. All of the subjects were administered the Full Range Picture Vocabulary Test (FRPVT) (Ammons and Ammons, 1948) and Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) (Lee, 1974) in the present study and were administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) (Dunn, 1965) and the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory (CELT) (Carrow, 1974) in a companion study. The data in both the present study and the companion study were combined to provide a broad base for statistical analysis.

Statistical analysis of the performance of the four subject groups (EMH males and females and normally-developing males and females) revealed significant relationships between performance on the FRPVT and the PPVT, and between performance on the CELT and the DSS.

A significant difference was found between EMH and normally- developing subjects on the CELT, while significant differences between subject groups were not found on the other three test measures. A significant difference was revealed between male performance and female performance on the PPVT, while male performance and female performance on the other three test measures were not significantly different. Interaction was found to be significant on the FRPVT, the PPVT, and the CELT. The DSS did not reveal a significant interaction.

It was concluded from the present study that syntactic performance cannot be meaningfully predicted from performance of vocabulary recognition and performance of vocabulary recognition cannot be meaningfully predicted from syntactic performance. Performance on the FRPVT can be predicted from performance on the PPVT and visa versa, and performance on the DSS can be predicted from performance on the CELI and visa versa. The CELT differentiated between performance by EMH and normally-developing subjects, while the other three test measures did not. The PPVT differentiated between performance by the male subjects and the female subjects, while the other three test measures did not differentiate between these two subject groups.

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