If ‘express’ is to ‘say’, then ‘believe’ is to what? Development of an aristotelian styled analogical reasoning task for Indian adolescents

Introduction: Analogical reasoning skills are a cognitive linguistic mechanism that develops with age. This development is manifested in the language abilities exhibited by children and adolescents. There are only a handful of standardised language tasks available to assess analogical skills in typically developing adolescents in India. Aim: The present research attempts to develop an analogical reasoning task to assess language in Indian adolescents. Materials and Methods: The research followed a two-stage cluster random sampling design with a total of 432 participants between 10-16 years of age allocated based on age and standard. The participants were recruited from English-medium schools based on a selection criterion. The development of the task followed three stages: Stage I comprised of construction of the task along with pilot studies; Stage II included the administration of the developed task; Stage III focused on establishing test validity and reliability measures. The mean and SD of the scores of the task of the adolescents (typical and language disordered) were calculated. The test-retest reliability of the items was measured using Kappa statistics. Intra-class correlation coefficient was done to determine the agreement between the total scores of the task. Mann Whitney Test was done for the items and total scores of each age group. ROC analysis was performed to determine the sensitivity and specificity. Results: Significant results were obtained when the typically developing and age matched adolescents with language disorders were compared using Mann-Whitney test. ROC analysis revealed a moderate-high sensitivity and low-moderate specificity. Conclusion: The developed task is a criterion and norm-referenced test which can be used to determine language disordered adolescents.