Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised (SUGAR): New Normative Values for Language Sample Analysis Measures

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to document whether mean length of utterance (MLU_S), total number of words (TNW), clauses per sentence (CPS), and/or words per sentence (WPS) demonstrated age-related changes in children with typical language and to document the average time to collect, transcribe, and analyze conversational language samples.

Method

Participants were 385 typically developing children (ages 3;0–7;11 [years;months]), with a final sample size of 270 participants (133 males and 137 females). Fifty-utterance conversational language samples were collected using a language sampling protocol. Four language sample analysis (LSA) metrics (i.e., MLU_S, TNW, CPS, WPS) were calculated from the samples.

Results

Results indicated statistically significant age-related increases in the four metrics. The average time to collect, transcribe, and analyze each sample was 20.91 min (SD = 3.97; range = 10.55–33.37).

Conclusion

MLU_S, TNW, CPS, and WPS may be used with other assessment data to document age-related changes in children's language. When used as part of an assessment, the results from all of the metrics should be considered. Considering results from only 1 individual metric is not encouraged. These results suggest LSA may be completed in approximately 20 min, which is less than the average time to administer a standardized, norm-referenced language assessment.

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