Evaluation of Syntax in Three-Year-Old Spanish-Speaking Puerto Rican Children

The performance of 30 normal and 30 language-deviant three-year-ols Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican children was compared on two measures of linguistic proficiency. They are mean length of utterance, following a scoring procedure adapted for Spanish speakers by the primary investigator, and Lees' Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure adapted for Spanish by Toronto. Results indicated that both methods of language assessment were sensitive to age and language status differences within the three-year age range. Accordingly, they can be usefully employed in research investigations to equate subjects on a linguistic basis, and in the clinical evaluation of small differences in the language maturity of preschool Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican children.