Author: Maira Farooq
Supervisor: Nazia Bashir, Sharmin Aslam Tarar, Farah Malik PhD
Degree: MS
Year: 2015-2017
University: Centre for Clinical Psychology, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
The present study investigated age and gender differences in
mean length of utterances of children. The sample for the study
was 18 typically developing children of age 4.7-6.0. This was a
group study with an overall sample of 36 children of age range
3.1-6.0. The overall sample was divided into 6 age bands with a 6
month interval for each of them (i.e. 3.1-3.6, 3.7-4.0, 4.1-4.6, 4.7-
5.0, 5.1-5.6 and 5.7-6.0). The total number of age bands was
divided into 2 equal parts. The present study covered the upper 3
bands i.e. 4.7-5.0, 5.1-5.6 and 5.7-6.0. Cross- sectional research
design was used. The data was collected in the home environment
using semi-structured elicitation techniques. The data was
transcribed and analyzed for 150 medial utterances. Both MLUm
and MLUw were used to calculate the mean length of utterances
of children. The results for the present study showed that there
was no statistically significant difference of MLU across age.
However, the results for the group study showed highly
significant differences of MLU across ages. There were no
statistically significant gender differences of MLU. The
relationship between MLUm and MLUw was highly significant
for both present and group study.
Keywords: Utterances, Children of 4.7-6.0 years.
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