Performance of English-speaking Indians on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test

Abstract

A number of Indian children receive their formal schooling in a language other than their first language. Irrespective of the language spoken at home, these children attend English-medium schools. If children with such a background require speech-language assessment, it is only appropriate that the assessment be carried out in English but, with such clients, the clinician lacks the necessary tools for formal language assessment, as there are no tests for assessment of English-speaking Indians. It would be ideal to construct a new test for this population. However, considering the various difficulties encountered in the construction of new tests, an immediate solution would be to modify an existing test to make it suitable for the Indian population. Keeping this in view, the present study was carried out to analyse the performance of English-speaking Indian subjects in different age ranges on form 'L' of the revised Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Subjects between 10;0 to 10;11 years, 11;0 to 11;11 years, 12;0 to 12;11 years, 13;0 to 13;11 years, 14;0 to 14;11 years, 17;0 to 17;11 years, 18;0 to 18;11 years and 19;0 to 19;11 years from different schools and colleges in the suburbs of Mumbai were considered. Results indicate an age trend in the development of vocabulary skills, such that vocabulary increases with an increase in age. However, Indian subjects are found to be performing at a lower level as compared with their chronological age. Furthermore, error analysis indicates that this test cannot be considered appropriate for use with English-speaking Indians.