ORCID

Abstract

BackgroundExisting direct measures of vocabulary for ages 2–3 years are insufficient as vocabulary increases to include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, reflecting qualitative changes that support emerging grammatical abilities.AimsThe present study aims to establish the psychometric properties and validate a lexical screening tool for 19–36-month-old British English-speaking children, the WinG (Words in Game) test. Specifically, it examines gender differences in internal consistency, concurrent validity and predictive gender invariance across comprehension and production tasks. In addition, the study evaluates the diagnostic accuracy of the tool by establishing clinical cut-off scores to distinguish children with typical versus at-risk language development. Finally, it presents developmental trends in toddlers’ aggregate lexical comprehension and production scores, reported in percentiles and stratified by gender.Methods and ProceduresParticipants were 336 English-speaking children aged 19–36 months. Sub-set of 85 children were screened with the Words in Game (WinG) test and the Preschool Language Scale (PLS-4). The PLS-4 scores were used as reference tests to ascertain psychometric properties and estimate the sensitivity and specificity of the WinG comprehension and production tasks.Outcomes and ResultsGirls outperformed boys on both comprehension and production tasks. The WinG comprehension and production tasks showed strong concurrent validity, with scores positively and highly correlated with the PLS-4 reference measures. Predictive gender invariance was also demonstrated, as both WinG dimensions predicted PLS-4 scores equivalently across genders. Using the 15th percentile as a cut-off, the WinG test demonstrated fair sensitivity for comprehension and good sensitivity for production, though specificity was below the desirable threshold for both tasks.Conclusions and ImplicationsThe tool provides a valuable starting point for identifying early receptive and expressive lexical difficulties through direct assessment by speech and language therapists (SLTs). Clinical implications and limitations are also discussed.

Publication Date

2026-07-07

Publication Title

International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders

Volume

61

Issue

4

ISSN

1368-2822

Acceptance Date

2026-06-17

Deposit Date

2026-06-19

Funding

We thank Cristina Naftanaila, Lydia Gunning, and Hannah Jenkins for their meticulous work in compiling and managing the project dataset. We are also grateful to the children and their parents who volunteered to participate in the study. Open access publishing facilitated by Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, as part of the Wiley - CRUI-CARE agreement.

Keywords

early screening, gender differences, lexicon, psychometric properties, sensitivity and specificity, toddlers

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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