Table 4.
Means, standard deviations, and fixed effects on mean length of utterance (MLU) by age group and by discourse context.
| Measure | 5-year-olds |
8-year-olds |
Estimate | SE | χ2 | p | ηp 2 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | SD | M | SD | ||||||
| MLUm | 6.98 | 1.67 | 8.73 | 2.18 | 1.75 | .45 | 12.05 | < .001*** | .12 |
| MLUw |
6.39 |
1.57 |
7.86 |
1.97 |
1.47 |
.42 |
10.34 |
.001**
|
.11 |
| Question–answer | Narrative | ||||||||
|
MLUm |
7.11 |
2.05 |
8.63 |
1.93 |
1.50 |
.25 |
31.07 |
< .001*** |
.26 |
| MLUw | 6.41 | 1.86 | 7.87 | 1.70 | 1.44 | .22 | 34.75 | < .001*** | .29 |
Note. Degree of freedom for all models is 1. “m” indicates morphemes as the unit of measurement; “w” indicates words as the unit of measurement. The interaction between fixed effects is not shown because it was not significant. The reference category for group was 8-year-olds and for context was narratives. MLUm = MLU in morphemes; MLUw = MLU in words.
**
p ≤ .01.
***
p ≤ .001.