Reliability of targets in a picture naming task

Abstract

The Words in Game (WinG) test is a tool for assessing language development in children, two versions of this test have been developed, one in Italy (Bello et al., 2012) and one in England (Cattani et al., 2019). The present research consists of two studies aiming to determine the reliability of the targets used in the English WinG cards. Study One uses 17 adult participants to rate each set of cards (Italian and English) on how well they represent target constructs, to see if one set is rated as ‘better’ than the other. Study Two consists of the WinG test being run with 34 child participants to determine if there is a difference in the scores of the two groups of children when one group is tested using the English cards and the other using the Italian cards. Study One finds that the adults rate the English WinG cards as significantly better than the Italian cards in three subtests, it also finds that there are some significant differences in the ratings of individual cards within the test, this suggests that there will be some differences between the scores of the children. However, in Study Two no significant differences are found between the two sets of cards in any subtest, suggesting that changing stimuli does not influence children in the same way as adults. This therefore demonstrates that the targets used in the English WinG cards are reliable when assessing children and that it is appropriate to use this tool for assessing language development in children.