An investigation of the effect of using varying stimuli to assess normal children's comprehension of five locative prepositions

Abstract

Assessing children's knowledge of locative prepositions has been a focus of interest for both researchers and practicing clinicians over the past two decades (Boehm, 1969;E. Clark, 1973).Information about locative prepositions can give insight into how children acquire understanding of these relationships, as well as providing information about assessing and faciljitating this understanding in both normal and I language disordered children. Speech-language pathologists routinely 2 assess normal and language disordered children's understanding and use of locative prepositions, since these relationships are so frequently occurring in our language and appear to have value across different communicative contexts (Zyve, 1927;Lahey and Bloom, 1977).A recurring concern in recent research appears to be the role that assessment variables play in accurately measuring children's knowledge and use of prepositions. Age and order of acquisition of prepositions has become a dynamic rather than static standard, as different ways of assessing prepositions also give different results (Johnston and Slobin, 1979; E. Clark, 1981;Johnston, 1984). These researchers have investigated assessment variables such as context (picture, object, no context) and response (self actions, manipulating, pointing) in assessing normal children's understanding and use of prepositions (Harris and