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Sentence repetition tasks are a common tool for assessing linguistic competence with regard to grammar development in young children, and are considered as potential behavioral markers for language impairment (e.g., Conti-Ramsden, Botting, & Faragher, 2001; Klem et al., 2015). While studies with second language learners also find the sentence repetition task to be sensitive to language impairments (e.g., Gutiérrez-Clellen, Restrepo, & Simón-Cereijido, 2006), more recent studies of bilingual children also show the task to discriminate children with such impairments (e.g., Armon-Lotem and Natalia Meir, 2016). The aim for the study described in this preregistered protocol is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Sentence repetition task for Singapore. This task includes four versions based on the four official languages of Singapore (English, Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu ‘Malay’, and Tamil). English and Mandarin Chinese language versions are modelled after tasks previously developed by Dr. Susan Rickard-Liow and her research team at the National University of Singapore to investigate morpho-syntactic knowledge. New sentences were developed for Mandarin Chinese to match the structure of the English task. The Malay and Tamil items were newly developed for a larger scale project, in collaboration with external experts. While the Malay and Tamil versions, like the Chinese version, were developed to be similar and comparable to the English version in terms of sentence length (long, short) and type (canonical, non-canonical), more language specific morphological constructs were also included. As part of assessing children’s bilingual oral language skills, each child participant was administered the English language version, as well as the version in their assigned Mother Tongue language. External language experts (Dr. Hock Huan Goh; Dr. Mukhlis; Dr. Seetha Lakshmi) and current authors (N.T. Yussof, P. Vijayakumar, A. Arshad, Ng, S.C.) deemed the item appropriateness, errors and readability of the finalised items. The aim for this study is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Sentence Repetition Task for Singapore as a standardized assessment tool for capturing the morpho-syntactical development in Singaporean children from preschool (Nursery, K1) to Primary school (P1-4). The assessment tool is developed for four languages (English plus ‘mother tongue’ languages (MT) of Chinese, Malay and Tamil). The intended use of the assessment is to measure proficiency in two languages: English and a MT.

The Nonword Repetition test measures the ability to maintain speech sounds in phonological memory. This ability is held to relate to learning new words (Baird, Slonims, Simonoff & Dworzynski, 2011; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989; Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, & Baddeley, 1992, 1994; Nation & Hulme, 2010), and the task differentiates children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from typical-developing children across studies on different languages (Chiat & Polisenska, 2016). Currently, there are gaps in bilingual assessment for language disorders such as DLD. To help mitigate this gap, previous research aimed to develop nonword repetition tasks that would be sensitive across multiple languages, and also cross-linguistically (e.g., Chiat, 2015). The aim for the study described in this preregistered protocol is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Non-word Repetition task for Singapore. This task includes four versions based on the four official languages of Singapore (English, Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu ‘Malay’, and Tamil), along with a cross-linguistic ‘universal’ version. The English, cross-linguistic, and Chinese items were derived from other studies (Chiat, Polisenska & Szewczyk, 2012; Shiyun & Luo, 2019). The Malay and Tamil items were newly developed for a larger scale project, in collaboration with external experts. Similar to the earlier versions, item difficulty was manipulated with number and type of syllables (2, 3, 4; open, closed), as well as presence vs. absence of language specific features (nasals, diphthongs, short/long vowels, retroflex consonants or clusters), as a factorial arrangement across 24 items. Authors of the original task (S. Chiat & K. Polisenska), along with Malay language expert (R. Razak) and current authors (N.T. Yussof, P. Vijayakumar) deemed the item appropriateness and wordlikeness of the final lists of nonword items. This is a first step to develop a psychometrically sound standardized assessment tool to capture multilingual phonological short-term memory for Singapore. For the purpose of catering to bilingual children in Singapore, three versions of this task are administered to groups of Singaporean children from Nursery (N2) to Primary school (P3) in this study. Each participant completes versions that contain items based on phonotactic probability for (a) English (24 items), (b) their mother tongue language (Chinese, Malay or Tamil; 24 items) and (c) a universal set of probabilities (cross-linguistic; 16 items).

To understand child bilingualism in Singapore, researchers, educators, and clinicians require a set of psychometrically sound assessment tools to measure children’s language proficiency in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. A new assessment tool (the Singapore Multilingual Assessment of Receptive Vocabulary - SMARV) is designed to fill this need: with four language versions to have comparable difficulty levels, and administration through a touch-screen device in order to reduce human resources for test administration and scoring. The intended use of the assessment is to measure proficiency in two languages: English plus another language ("mother tongue", MT). The study described in this preregistered protocol represents a plan to investigate the psychometric properties of the Singapore Multilingual Assessment of Receptive Vocabulary (SMARV). The study will include data collected with Singaporean children from Nursery 2 (N2) to Primary school 3 (P3). The current version of the SMARV was adapted over several rounds of revision from an existing task measuring receptive vocabulary in Singapore. The items and presentation platform were modified from The Bilingual Language Assessment Battery (BLAB; Sze & Rickard-Liow, 2008), which was then further adapted into the English-Mandarin Language Assessment Battery (EMLAB; Tan, Lai, Ng, Lee, Ong, Martin & Yap, 2017), and once again into the current version of SMARV. Across these different versions the task format remains the same, and is similar to other receptive vocabulary tests, such as the PPVT-4 (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) or the BVPS (Dunn et al., 1982). Children are presented with a picture choice (4 pictures arranged in a 2X2 array) to match to an orally presented word on a set of items that increase in difficulty. There is one correct choice of the matching the picture to the target word, and three distractor pictures (see example below). For the SMARV version, the distractors are designed to be confusable either visually (Tan et al., 2017), phonologically (same first sound in respective language), or semantically (Tan et al., 2017). The target word items include equal numbers of nouns and verbs. Three bands of (overlapping) items are intended for age cohorts from kindergarten (K), to primary 1 and 2 (P1/2), and primary 3 and 4 (P3/4.) There is a complete overlap between the English and Mother tongue target words, semantic distractors, and visual distractors in each band. Only the phonological distractors are specific to each language.

Morphological awareness involves the ability to manipulate the internal structure of words and reflect on the meaning of the constituents that form the words (Carlisle, 2000). As children grow older, their exposure to morphologically complex words increases. The ability to understand the word formation rules and the meaning of these structures facilitates vocabulary acquisition (Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Tyler & Nagy, 1989; White, Power & White, 1989), and word reading skills (Levesque et al, 2018, Wei et al, 2014). Languages contain compounds and derivative structures, but in different proportions, and so morphological awareness skill development may vary depending on the typological distribution of derivative or compound word in a specific language. For example, as 70% of Chinese words are compound words unlike English and Malay where derivatives are more prevalent (Liu & McBride Chang, 2010), Chinese children tend to do better on compounding tasks, and English children do better at derivative tasks, however, these two groups converge as they mature (Ku & Anderson, 2003). Development of morphological awareness tasks for the different languages in this preregistered study will be adjusted according to the language-specific features of morphological structure. The aim for the study described in this preregistered protocol is to investigate the psychometric properties of the Morphological Awareness task for Singapore. This task includes four versions based on the three official mother-tongue languages of Singapore (Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu ‘Malay’, and Tamil) and English. The Chinese, Malay and Tamil items were newly developed for a larger scale project, in collaboration with external experts. A Mandarin-Chinese Singaporean bilingual voiced for the Mandarin Chinese version, a Malay-English Singaporean bilingual voiced for the Malay version, and a Tamil-English Singaporean bilingual voiced for the Tamil version of this task. Measuring morphological awareness is based on 3 tasks targeted at developmentally appropriate levels from preschool (kindergarten) to middle primary school. They are the Morphological construction test, Morpheme discrimination test, and Select interpretations test. The first tests the ability to form new words structurally, while the last two test abilities to reflect on meaning based on the word-formation rules. Out of these 3 tasks, for the preschool age group, preschoolers do better at Morphological construction task. One explanation is that this task is guided in its format, and it only tests the ability to recognize patterns in the structural formation of words (Tong, McBride-Chang, 2010, Wei et al 2014). Other than reflecting on the structure of words, reflecting on the meanings of the structural parts of the words is another salient aspect of Morphological awareness. This aspect is more challenging for kindergarten and lower primary children (Ku & Anderson, 2003, Levesque et al, 2018). But between the two tasks that test meaning reflection, the discriminate morphemes task is simpler because it does not require conscious identification of meaning of a specific morpheme. For these reasons, the Select Interpretations Task will be administered to middle primary children (oldest age group), the Discriminate Morphemes test to lower primary children, and the Morphological Construction task will be administered to preschool students. This pre-registered study is a first step to develop a psychometrically sound standardized assessment tool to capture multilingual morphological awareness for Singapore. For the purpose of catering to bilingual children in Singapore, four versions of these tasks are administered to groups of Singaporean children from Nursery (N2) to Primary school (P3) in this study. Each language variation of the Morpheme Construction test contains 20 items. The Discriminate Morpheme test comprises of 20 items for English, Tamil and Malay and 24 items for Mandarin Chinese. Likewise, the Select Interpretations test comprises of 20 items for English, Tamil and Malay and 24 items for Mandarin Chinese.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jpa-10.1177_07342829211047005 for Developing and Piloting a Computerized Adaptive Test for a Culturally Appropriate Measure of Adaptive Behavior by Mo Chen, Yong-Hwee Nah, Nicolette Waschl, Kenneth Poon and Ping Chen in Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment

This paper reports on results from two major research projects conducted in South Australia. The first investigates adaptation to climate change in two of the state's major grain and sheep farming regions, using semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The second uses a postal questionnaire and an internet-based survey of residents in the peri-urban fringes of Adelaide, the state capital, to examine knowledge of and attitudes to climate change and resulting adaptations, especially in the context of increasing risk of wildfires. The research on adaptation to climate change in agriculture focused on formal institutions (e.g., government agencies) and communities of practice (e.g., farm systems groups). Both groups noted that farmers autonomously adapt to various risks, including those induced by climate variability. The types and levels of adaptation varied among individuals partly because of barriers to adaptation, which included limited communication and engagement processes established between formal institutions and communities of practice. The paper discusses possibilities for more effective transfers of knowledge and information on climate change among formal institutions, communities of practice, trusted individual advisors and farmers. Research in the peri-urban fringe revealed that actions taken by individuals to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change were linked to the nature of environmental values held (or ecological worldview) and place attachment. Individuals with a strong place attachment to the study area (the Adelaide Hills) who possessed knowledge of and/or beliefs in climate change were most likely to take mitigating actions. This was also linked to previous experience of major risk from wildfires. The paper concludes by discussing prospects for developing co-management for reducing the impact of climate change across multiple groups in rural and peri-urban areas. Refereed/Peer-reviewed