Investigating the validity of assessments involving picture stimuli across cultures and contexts: Evidence from young children in Kenya and the U.S.

Many childhood assessments rely on picture stimuli, but children in diverse early environments possess varying amounts of experience with pictures. Two preregistered experiments, conducted in 2022-2023, investigated whether picture assessments are valid across diverse contexts. Children from Mombasa County, Kenya in their first month of formal schooling (n = 192; 2-7 years; 85 females; all Black) performed more accurately on an object vocabulary task than a picture vocabulary task (β = .07, p < .001) (Experiment 1). Children from the San Francisco Bay Area (n = 96; 2-3 years; 52 females; predominantly White and Asian) performed similarly on object and picture vocabulary tasks (β = .02, p = .60) (Experiment 2). Consequently, assessments involving pictures may underestimate children’s capacities, in some contexts.