Profiles of Early Expressive Phonological Skills-Brazilian Portuguese (PEEPS-BP): a diagnostic accuracy study.
Simone Nicolini de Simoni, Denis Altieri de Oliveira Moraes, Karina Carlesso Pagliarin and 1 others
PMID 39879428WHAT IT FOUND
The PEEPS-BP Expanded List effectively distinguished between children with typical and delayed expressive vocabulary.
A cut-off score of 34 points showed high accuracy, with 95.7% sensitivity and 100% specificity, supporting its use for screening Brazilian Portuguese speakers aged 24 to 36 months.
Key findings
01Children with delayed vocabulary and expressive language development scored significantly lower on the PEEPS-BP Expanded List than typically developing children.
02The test showed high diagnostic accuracy with an area under the curve of 0.994.
03A cut-off score of 34 points identified clinical cases with 95.7% sensitivity and 100% specificity.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was very small (30 children), with only 7 children in the clinical group, which limits the generalisability of the cut-off scores. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling during the pandemic, which may introduce selection bias. The study was conducted in a specific region, and the authors note that results may not apply to other regions of Brazil due to sociodemographic and dialectal differences. The clinical group was defined partly by parent report and Bayley Scale scores, and the study did not assess phonological skills, only vocabulary.
Declared interests
The study was supported by a Research Productivity Scholarship from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). No other conflicts of interest were declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume this test works for all children or in all regions. The high accuracy was found in a very small sample of 30 children from one area of Brazil. It has not been validated for phonological skills, only vocabulary, and results may not apply to children from different socioeconomic or dialect backgrounds.