Evaluating an expressive language screening tool for five-year-old Cantonese-speaking children

Abstract

This study examined the screening accuracy of the Cantonese Early Identification Test for Pre-primary Children (CEIT) in identifying Cantonese-speaking preschool children with language impairment (LI). Nineteen children, aged between 5;01 and 5;06, from 2 kindergarten-cum-nurseries and an Early Education Training Centre, were administered the CEIT and the HKCOLAS’s Cantonese Grammar subtest. The CEIT was found to have high sensitivity (100%), fair specificity (77%), and modest LR+ (4.35) and LR- (0.23) values if the “gold” standard for the child’s language status was determined by the Cantonese Grammar subtest score. This finding provides further evidence that the CEIT is a potentially useful language screening tool for preschool children in Hong Kong. Further research should examine its screening accuracy with a larger and broader age group of children, and with the use of current performance in objective measures as the “gold” standard of language status.