Abstract
Previous Studies Have Shown High Correlation Between Imitation Tests And Other Tests Of Expressive Language. The Present Study Compares One Child's Performance And Relates This To His General Linguistic Ability. Larsp Was Found To Reflect His Ability Quite Well But Celi Grossly Underestimated It. We Hypothesised That The Morphological Bias Of Celi Was Responsible, And Further Investigation Confirmed This. Yet The Pattern And Range Of Syntactic Structures Found In The Spontaneous Sample Was Confirmed And Extended By Celi. Imitation Tests Can Therefore Usefully Supplement Spontaneous-Sample Assessment, But Require A More Purely Syntactic Basis Of Scoring.
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