Measuring the morphological language system of indian school-going adolescents using a novel derivational suffix task

Background: Morphological processing are higher-order abilities which includes an implicit processing of the morphological language. Tasks that can expose the morphological framework of an individual requires to be administered with utmost precision. Aims: With the research in adolescent language in India being an unexplored area, the present study attempts to develop a derivational suffix task to assess the morphological system of school going Indian adolescents. Methods: The research followed a two-stage cluster random sampling design with a total of 432 participants between 10-16 years of age. The participants were recruited from English-medium schools based on a selection criteria. The development of the task followed 3 stages. Stage I comprised of construction of the task along with pilot study; Stage II included the administration of the developed task; Stage III focused on establishing test validity and reliability measures. Results: The mean and SD of the scores of the task of the adolescents (typicals and 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. Conclusions: The developed task is a norm and criterion-referenced test which can be used to identify adolescents with language disorders.