New Zealand Children and the Preschool Language Assessment Instrument

Abstract

Abstract Blank's examination of children's abilities in abstract language was implemented in the Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (2nd edition). The PLAI-2 has four distinct levels of increasing difficulty: matching, selective analysis, reordering, and reasoning. This study showed that the reordering and reasoning levels (III and IV) overlapped in terms of difficulty for 5-year-old New Zealand children. This may require a re-examination of Blank's construct. Overlap was also seen for matching and selective analysis, but this can be explained in terms of the children performing at ceiling.