The present study describes the post validation process of a novel aptitude measure for YLs. During the validation process three studies (N=49; N=207, N=209) were conducted in order to establish the final product of the validation: a novel aptitude test. A measure consisting of three tasks was designed using a natural language which was at the same time a new language to the participants. The validation process using only the quantitative approach proved to be faulty due to the fact that it could not explain why certain tasks showed neither internal not external validity despite being age appropriate (e.g. the paired associates task). In addition to this, other tasks like a measure of language analytic ability (LAA) proved to be both internally and externally consistent but showed very low predictivity. The third measure, an auditory alertness (AA) task operationalized as a number learning task, proved to be both internally and externally valid and showed good predictive validity but received a rather unusual classification from the participants. Namely, YLs failed to see the new language in this task considering the fact that the content of the task were only numbers.
All these insights show that without the YLs' perspective, which was spontaneously offered during the three validation studies, the final product, the novel aptitude measure, cannot be fully explained nor its validation completed. Therefore, a new study involved both the quantitative and the qualitative approach.
In addition to the quantitative approach achieved by analyzing the results of the described aptitude test battery, the qualitative approach was achieved by means of a meta-task interview. The participants, ages 6 & 7, N=50, were asked to say what a specific task was about and what it was exactly that they did in order to achieve the task's goal. Preliminary results indicate a towards a positive correlation between accuracy on different aptitude measures and YLs' ability to verbalize either the linguistic rule they were supposed to extrapolate or the memorization strategy they employed. The results are discussed in light of the emerging (YL) aptitude theory and child participatory research.
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