Description
The Mean Length of Utterance for words (MLU-w) is a measure of linguistic productivity in children. The aim of this study was to establish the default value of MLU-w for European Portuguese aged between 4;07 and 4;11 and understand the relationship between this spontaneous speech measure and variables such as, gender and parental education. This study involved 30 monolingual European Portuguese children (21 girls and 9 boys) with typical language development. In order to perform the study, data collection was conducted in schools attended by the children and lasted 30 minutes. The transcripts of data were performed using the ELAN program. The results pointed to a default value of MLU-w = 4,90 for European Portuguese children aged between 4,07- 4;11 with no significant differences between boys and girls. Moreover, parental education influenced significantly the values of MLU-w. Therefore, children of parents with higher education levels were associated with the higher values of MLU-w and children whose parents had less education expressed the lowest values in MLU-w. As a result, parental education seems to be a strong predictor of children’s language development. The results were discussed and contextualized using international publications. Future researches in this area were also suggested.| Period | 21 Jan 2013 |
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| Held at | Faculty of Health Sciences and Nursing |
| Degree of Recognition | Master |
Keywords
- Gender, parental education and MLU-w
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