Measurement of language production in two-year-olds: A structured laboratory technique

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Abstract
Two studies investigated use of an elicited imitation task to encourage the production of semantic relations by 20- to 28-month-old children. In both studies, a model repeated sentences containing target semantic relations several times, accompanied by three-dimensional props to aid the children's memory and to provide context for their language. Results suggested that even the youngest children could be motivated to imitate, and that the elicited imitation technique was particularly successful in increasing the frequency of certain semantic relations that tended to be infrequent in spontaneous speech. Elicited imitation may thus be advantageous over spontaneous speech sampling because it allows greater experimenter control over contextual variables than is possible in most naturalistic settings.