Assessment of Speech Development in Senior Preschool Age: The Battery of Neuropsychological Tests and Norms

Abstract

The main goal of the study was to implement subtests of the main neuropsychological test to the development of speech in samples of children 5–7 years old with normative development, and also to collect average indicators for this age in phonemic awareness, active and passive vocabulary, grammatical development (understanding of prepositional and logical-grammatical structures). The study sample consisted of 635 children (311 boys and 324 girls) aged 5–7 years. Children attended senior and preparatory groups of kindergartens in Moscow. The norms for the implementation of tests for four age groups (from 5 to 7 years old with a step of 0,5 years) are presented separately in the article for boys and girls. It was shown that there is a significant increase in the productivity of performing speech tasks in the selected age periods, which indicates the sensitivity of older preschool age to the development of all aspects of speech under consideration. The data obtained will be useful for a wide range of professionals in the field of early childhood education and development.

Keywords

• preschool age
• speech development
• understanding of logical and grammatical constructions
• vocabulary
• phonemic awareness