Development and Pilot Application of a Grammatical Comprehension Test for Children Aged 5–8 Years

Language comprehension (LC) plays a crucial role in children’s social and academic development. However, children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or Language Disorders (LD) associated with other conditions (Bishop et al., 2017) often experience significant challenges in LC, particularly in grammatical components such as syntax and morphology (Robertson & Joanisse, 2010). These difficulties can be effectively identified and diagnosed using assessment tools with robust psychometric properties. While several tools have been developed to assess LC in children from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Chernova, Novozhilov & Slioussar, 2023), there is currently no standardized tool designed specifically for assessing grammatical comprehension in Greek or Greek-Cypriot-speaking children.

This study aimed to develop and pilot a novel assessment tool for evaluating grammatical LC in Greek and Cypriot-Greek-speaking children aged 5–8 years. The tool includes five tasks targeting key areas of LC: a) comprehension of simple and complex instructions, b) comprehension of simple and complex sentences, c) sentence repetition, d) grammaticality judgment of sentences, and e) text comprehension.

The task items were designed based on research identifying syntactic and morphological difficulties as clinical markers for distinguishing children with LD from their Typically Developing (TD) peers.

During the pilot phase, the tool was administered to 30 TD children (aged 4;10–12;9 years), 12 children with LD (aged 6;8–12;9 years), and 10 TD adults (aged 24;0–66;8 years) who were speakers of the Cypriot Greek dialect. Results revealed that younger participants performed worse on most tasks compared to older participants, and children with LD scored significantly lower than their TD peers. These findings align with the tool’s design, supporting its ability to differentiate between LD and TD groups based on grammatical comprehension.

Currently in its validation phase, this assessment tool has the potential to fill a critical gap in both clinical practice and research. It will provide speech and language therapists with a standardized measure for assessing LC in Greek-speaking children, enabling earlier and more accurate identification of language difficulties.

Key words: comprehension, assessment, children, morphosyntax, language disorders