Early Language Predictor – Practice Questionnaire

This short exercise shows the type of questions used in research to study early predictors of later language outcomes. It is for illustration only and does not provide any diagnosis or screening result.

The survey can be administered when children are 2 or 3 years old.

1. Sentence use

Which sentence sounds most like the way the child currently talks?

If the child is using even more complex sentences than these, choose the second option.

2. Words the child says

Does the child currently say each of these words?

circle
accident
forget / forgot
today
3. Behaviour

Do you have concerns about the child's behaviour?

In the research, these items were combined in a statistical model. On their own, they do not provide a diagnosis or a label.

Your responses

Here is a simple summary of what you entered:

These answers can be turned into numbers and fed into a statistical model to estimate the probability that a child might have lower language scores in late childhood. The workflow for this can be found here: https://github.com/lottiegasp/languagepredictions . These results could be used to recruit children with higher probability of lower language outcome into early intervention trials.

Important: This survey is currently suitable for research only. It is not a screening tool and must not be used to diagnose or label any child. Any concerns about a child's language development should be discussed with a qualified professional.

Credits and acknowledgements
Question set adapted from work by Loretta Gasparini and colleagues on early language prediction in Australian population cohorts (including the ELVS and LSAC studies) and the paper “Identifying early language predictors: A replication of Gasparini et al. (2023) confirming applicability in a general population cohort” published in the International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 2024.

This demo interface is an educational illustration only. It is not an official tool and is not endorsed as a clinical screening instrument by the original authors, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the University of Melbourne, or Growing Up in Australia (LSAC).

For the original research code and documentation, see the language prediction resources shared by the authors (e.g. the GitHub repository by Loretta Gasparini).