Research Article

Comparing Scores on the Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test and Receptive One-Word Picture
Vocabulary Test in Preschoolers With and Without
Hearing Loss
Erin M. Ingvalson,a Lynn K. Perry,b Mark VanDam,c and Tina M. Grieco-Calubd
a
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle b Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables,
FL c Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Washington State University, Spokane d Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
Rush Medical College, Rush University, Chicago, IL

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article History: Purpose: We sought to compare raw scores, standard scores, and age equiva-
Received November 3, 2022 lences on two commonly used vocabulary tests, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Revision received February 5, 2023 Test (PPVT) and the Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWPVT).
Accepted March 31, 2023 Method: Sixty-two children, 31 with hearing loss (HL) and 31 with normal hear-
ing (NH), were given both the PPVT and ROWPVT as part of an ongoing longi-
Editor-in-Chief: Erinn H. Finke tudinal study of emergent literacy development in preschoolers with and without
Editor: Susan Nittrouer HL. All children were between 3 and 4 years old at administration, and the two
tests were administered within 3 weeks of each other. Both tests were given
https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_AJSLP-22-00352 again 6 months later. Standard scores and age equivalencies were calculated
for both tests using published guidelines.
Results: There was no significant effect of test for any of our analyses. How-
ever, there was a main effect of time, with both standard scores and age equiv-
alencies being significantly higher at the second test. Children with NH had sig-
nificantly higher standard scores and age equivalencies than children with NH,
but there was no interaction between hearing status and time, suggesting that
the two groups were growing at the same rate.
Conclusions: Clinicians can be comfortable administering both the PPVT and
ROWPVT to estimate children’s vocabulary levels, but there may be practice
effects when administering the tests twice within a calendar year. These data
also indicate that children with HL continue to lag behind their peers with NH
on vocabulary development.
Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23232848

Children’s vocabulary development is fundamental
to their future language abilities. For example, children
with larger vocabularies have better phonological aware-
ness (Rvachew, 2006) and better morphological sensitivity
(Duncan, 2018; Mahony et al., 2000). When learning to
read, vocabulary is a leading indicator on reading compre-
hension (Brimo et al., 2018; Quinn et al., 2015). In addi-
tion to the fact that vocabulary is related to a host of
other language abilities, vocabulary is a particularly easy
Correspondence Erin M. Ingvalson: eingvals@uw.edu. Disclosure:
The authors have declared that no competing financial or nonfinancial
interests existed at the time of publication.
skill to assess. The strong relation between vocabulary
and other language skills suggests that, in practice, vocab-
ulary can be a convenient index of a child’s developmental
level. Given the importance of vocabulary for future lin-
guistic performance, clinicians and researchers need valid
and reliable means of measuring vocabulary knowledge.
However, standardized assessments of receptive vocabu-
lary are often developed and normed for typically
developing, typically hearing children rather than children
with communication disorders such as hearing loss (HL),
who may be at elevated likelihood for language delays, or
have atypical developmental trajectories in their language
development. Although such assessments are frequently

1610 American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology • Vol. 32 • 1610–1619 • July 2023 • Copyright © 2023 The Authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
used to assess vocabulary in children with HL, it is
unknown whether different tests yield similar characteriza-
tions of delay and growth trajectory in this population.
Here, we compare the vocabulary trajectories of pre-
schoolers with and without HL as measured by two com-
monly administered receptive vocabulary assessments—the
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Fifth Edition (PPVT-5;
Dunn, 2019) and the Receptive One-Word Picture
Vocabulary Test–Fourth Edition (ROWPVT-4; Martin &
Brownell, 2011).
The Importance of Vocabulary in
Development
There is strong support for the idea that children’s
vocabulary abilities are related to both their oral and writ-
ten language skills. In particular, there is a bidirectional
association between vocabulary and phonological develop-
ment. For example, while children more readily learn new
words made up of sounds that they can already produce
(e.g., Leonard, 1989), children’s vocabulary knowledge
promotes children’s perception of phonological categories
(e.g., Swingley, 2019). These associations between lexical
and phonological processes can have cascading influences
on long-term literacy outcomes as well. Having a large
vocabulary gives children more information about the
sounds that make up words, which can help them process
and subsequently learn new words that they encounter in
spoken language (Morgan & Demuth, 1996; Pierrehumbert,
2003) and decode and learn new words in written lan-
guage (Duff et al., 2015; Lee, 2011).
This bidirectional association between vocabulary and
phonological sensitivity therefore is one factor that contrib-
utes to the so-called rich-get-richer or “Matthew effect”
(Duff et al., 2015; Merton & Merton, 1968), such that chil-
dren who know more words are more successful at learning
new words. Thus, vocabulary is associated with long-term
literacy outcomes, such as reading comprehension, both
because it supports the phonological sensitivity skills needed
to decode words, and because knowing more words allows
a child to recognize the meanings of familiar words and
infer the meanings of unfamiliar words they decode from
context. Furthermore, as many children with HL who use
cochlear implants or hearing aids and are learning a spoken
language have delays or difficulties in vocabulary develop-
ment, phonological sensitivity, and reading, it is important
to accurately measure vocabulary in this population.
Assessing Receptive Vocabulary in Children
With and Without HL
In much of the literature, vocabulary is often quanti-
fied as receptive vocabulary, which is larger than a child’s
expressive vocabulary and precedes expressive vocabulary
in development (e.g., Fenson et al., 1994). Additionally,
tests of receptive vocabulary do not have the same kinds
of performance demands as tests of expressive vocabulary,
which require children to pronounce a given word
sufficiently correctly as to be recognized by the test
administrator—a skill that can be extra challenging for
young children with communicative disorders, including
HL. We similarly focus on receptive vocabulary here.
Two common standardized tests that have been reported
in the literature are the PPVT-5 (henceforth, PPVT)
and the ROWPVT-4 (henceforth, ROWPVT). Both tests
use a four-alternative forced-choice design wherein the
child chooses the picture that best represents the stimulus
word spoken by the examiner. Both tests also establish
basal and ceiling metrics and utilize those metrics to
establish the raw score on the test. However, the rules for
establishing basal and ceiling metrics differ between the
two tests: The PPVT requires three consecutive correct
responses for the basal versus eight consecutive correct
responses for the ROWPVT; the PPVT requires six con-
secutive incorrect responses for the ceiling versus six out
of eight incorrect responses for the ROWPVT. The PPVT
also has more test items than the ROWPVT (240 and
190, respectively). Our experience administering the two
tests indicates that the PPVT takes longer to administer,
although publisher estimates of administration times for
both tests are 10–15 min.
Both the PPVT and ROWPVT have been normed
on and extensively used with typically developing children.
Both tests have also been used with a variety of children
identified as having a communication disorder or identi-
fied as being at an elevated likelihood of developing a
communication disorder. Reliable and valid measurement
of vocabulary in children with an elevated risk of a com-
munication disorder is particularly important, because
these children often have smaller vocabularies (McGregor
et al., 2013, 2021) and greater weaknesses in word learn-
ing than their typically developing peers (Gray, 2004;
Riches et al., 2005). Consistent with these findings, chil-
dren with early onset HL often show lower overall vocab-
ulary levels and shallower slopes of vocabulary growth
than children with normal hearing (NH; Ganek et al.,
2012; Lund, 2016, 2019; Nott et al., 2009). Word learning
studies have demonstrated that children with HL require
more presentations to learn a novel word than do their
peers with NH (Houston et al., 2012; Walker & McGregor,
2013). Perhaps not surprisingly, then, children with HL
also show weaker reading comprehension than children
with NH (Mayberry et al., 2011; Wendt et al., 2015;
Worsfold et al., 2018), a performance deficit that can
likely be at least partially attributed to children with HL’s
lower vocabulary levels.
Ingvalson et al.: Comparing the PPVT and ROWPVT 1611
 Although there is no formal normalized estimate of
the PPVT or ROWPVT, specifically for children with HL,
there is extensive precedent and reporting of using both
the PPVT (Cupples et al., 2018; Davidson et al., 2021;
Tomblin et al., 2020) and, somewhat less frequently, the
ROWPVT (Halliday & Bishop, 2005; Lund et al., 2015;
Malhotra et al., 2022) with this special population. A liter-
ature search for references to the PPVT or ROWPVT for
children with or without HL demonstrates that the PPVT
is cited approximately 150 times as often at the ROWPVT
(see Supplemental Material S1 for search terms and
results). The overrepresentation of the PPVT may lead to
the impression among some researchers and clinicians that
PPVT and vocabulary are essentially synonymous, and
other vocabulary tests may be viewed as of less utility.
Alternatively, in some published reports, there is no dis-
tinction made between the ROWPVT and PPVT, with the
standard score from either test used as a language measure
variable (see Frazier et al., 2021; Luckman et al., 2020) or
with no distinction made between the tests as examples of
probes into vocabulary (see Aikens et al., 2020), suggesting
that some researchers may see the tests as interchangeable.
It is therefore worth exploring whether the ROWPVT pro-
duces scores comparable with the PPVT for both typically
developing children and children with a communication dis-
order (in this case, HL) both for clinicians who may not
wish to use the PPVT and to accurately interpret research
that has used the tests interchangeably.
To the best of our knowledge, there exists only one
published report comparing the two tests. Ukrainetz and
Blomquist looked at the validity of the PPVT-3 and
ROWPVT-1 relative to natural language samples (Ukrainetz
& Blomquist, 2002). Twenty-eight children participated,
ranging in age from 3;11 to 6;0 (years;months). Standard
scores for the PPVT-3 and ROWPVT-1 were correlated,
r = 0.79 and were statistically similar for the participants.
Despite this lack of difference between scores, the
ROWPVT-1 standard scores appeared to be more sensi-
tive to metrics obtained from naturalistic language sam-
ples. Specifically, ROWPVT-1 standard scores were more
strongly correlated with number of different words (0.61
vs. 0.36 for the PPVT-3), with total number of words
(0.46 vs. 0.12 for the PPVT-3), and with mean length of
utterance (0.51 vs. 0.17 for the PPVT-3). Ukrainetz and
Blomquist interpreted these data as indicating lower crite-
rion validity for the PPVT-3 than for the ROWPVT-1 rel-
ative to natural language samples. There is some question,
however, regarding the validity of using an expressive lan-
guage sample as an indicator of the validity of a receptive
vocabulary measure (Gibson et al., 2013). Indeed, recep-
tive vocabulary is more often used as a means to estimate
expressive vocabulary (Dale & Fenson, 1996; Fenson
et al., 1994). Additionally, these data do not speak to
1612 American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology • Vol. 32 • 1610–1619 • July 2023
differences between the tests on age equivalences, analyses
that would not have been possible given the age range
in their sample. Finally, the PPVT has undergone two
revisions and the ROWPVT has undergone three revisions
since 2002. Therefore, an explicit comparison of the cur-
rent versions is warranted.
The aim of this report is to compare the scores
obtained by the PPVT and ROWPVT in a sample of
typically developing preschoolers and a matched sample
of preschoolers with HL. These data were obtained as
part of a larger, ongoing longitudinal study of emergent
literacy development in preschoolers with HL compared
with their peers with NH (Ingvalson et al., 2020). All
children enrolled in the current longitudinal study were
administered both the PPVT and ROWPVT within
3 weeks of each other, allowing for within-child com-
parisons. All children were between 3- and 4-year-olds
when enrolled, facilitating comparisons of standard
scores and age equivalencies for the two tests (cf.,
Ukrainetz & Blomquist, 2002). All children also com-
pleted a second assessment, administered 6 months
later, allowing vocabulary growth to be considered in
those children. There are three research questions: (a)
Are there differences between PPVT and ROWPVT
standard scores? (b) Does child hearing status influence
PPVT and ROWPVT standard scores? (c) Are there dif-
ferences age equivalencies provided by the PPVT and
ROWPVT?
Method
Participants
Thirty-one children with HL and 31 children with
NH completed T1 and T2 assessments. All children were
between 3 and 4 years old at enrollment. Children with
HL ranged from 36 months to 52 months (M =
43.06 months, SD = 3.89); children with NH ranged from
37 to 49 months (M = 43.26 months, SD = 3.58). Chil-
dren were evenly distributed throughout the age range. Of
the children with HL, nine were cochlear implant users, 17
were hearing aid users, and three used a bone-conduction
device (device type was not reported for two children). All
children with HL were being educated using a listening
and spoken language curriculum; all children were exclu-
sively spoken language users. Children with HL were
recruited from preschools specializing in a listening and
spoken language approach. Hearing thresholds were not
obtained for the current project; however, each child com-
pleted a “listening check” at the beginning of each school
day to ensure that they were able to access spoken lan-
guage. These schools also enroll peers with NH, and five
children were recruited from these schools. The remaining
children with NH were recruited from preschools for chil-
dren who are typically developing. Children were recruited
via flyers and letters sent home. Recruitment and consent
were in alignment with the institutional review boards of
the University of Washington, University of Miami, Rush
University, and Washington State University, which pro-
vided institutional review board approval.
The children with HL had all received early inter-
vention services for hearing, speech, and language prior to
enrolling in preschool. Early intervention services were
provided by specialists affiliated with the preschools.
Thirty-seven children (21 with HL) were female. Summary
demographics are shown in Table 1. Education levels were
higher for parents of children with NH than for parents of
children with HL, which was not unexpected (e.g., Fink
et al., 2007). However, only approximately half of parents
(18 families of a child with HL; 16 families of a child with
NH) opted to provide socioeconomic information, limiting
the utility of these data. Nonresponses were equally dis-
tributed across recruitment sites, and there was no differ-
ence in socioeconomic estimates across sites.
eight consecutive responses correct for the basal, six out
of eight incorrect responses for the ceiling; PPVT: three
consecutive correct responses for the basal, six consecutive
responses incorrect for the ceiling).
Statistics
Standard scores were calculated as a function of
child’s age at test and raw score using the lookup tables in
the manual. Age equivalencies were calculated as a func-
tion of raw score using the provided lookup tables. Age
equivalencies are provided in years;months and were con-
verted to months for the analyses. It is worth noting that
the PPVT-5 and ROWPVT-4 were normed on a large
sample of children with NH, which may not be represen-
tative regarding vocabulary development for children who
are HL (Lund, 2016). However, standard vocabulary
scores for children with HL are regularly reported in the
literature as indicators of whether children are performing
“in the normal range” and understanding whether stan-
dard scores differ between the two tests is therefore impor-
tant for understanding the literature. Data were analyzed
via analyses of variance (ANOVAs).

Materials and Procedures

Both the ROWPVT-4 and PPVT-5 were adminis-
tered at the T1 and T2 assessments. Assessments were
administered using standard procedures. Specifically, stim-
ulus plates were positioned in front of the child with the
examiner opposite. Examiners presented words using the
provided prompts and administered the practice items
prior to beginning the assessments. Basals and ceilings
were established according to the manual (ROWPVT:
Results
Standard Scores at T1 and T2
Children were grouped by hearing status (HL or
NH). To evaluate whether standard scores differed, test
type, hearing status, and time at test were entered into a
mixed-model ANOVA where test type and test time were
the within-subjects factor. We found a significant main

Table 1. Demographic information for the children in this study.

Characteristic HL NH
n (n males) 31 (10) 31 (15)
M age at enrollment in months (SD) 43.06 (3.89) 43.26 (3.58)
Hispanic 17% 20%
Asian 8% 5%
Black or African American 0% 0%
White 71% 90%
More than one race 21% 5%
Mothers with bachelor’s degree or higher 68% 89%
Fathers with bachelor’s degree or higher 74% 100%
M age at identification in months (SD) 2.93 (4.96) —
M age at 1st amplification in months (SD) 9.78 (10.28) —
n CI users 11 —
n HA users 17 —
n bone conduction users 3 —
n bimodal CI—HA users 0 —
Note. Dashes indicate not applicable. HL = hearing loss; NH = normal hearing; CI = cochlear implant; HA = hearing aid.

Ingvalson et al.: Comparing the PPVT and ROWPVT 1613

effect of hearing status, F(1, 60) = 28.45, p < .001. Chil-
dren with NH had higher standard scores than children
with HL (NH M = 110.38, SD = 14.76; HL M = 94.37,
SD = 13.47). There was a main effect of time, F(1, 60) =
7.22, p = .01. Scores were higher at T2 (M = 103.90,
SD = 16.09) than at T1 (M = 100.85, SD = 16.27). There
was no main effect of test nor any significant interactions
(see Figure 1).
Age Equivalent Scores
Our next set of analyses compared age equivalency
scores across the two tests. The PPVT does not provide
age equivalency scores below 2;6; estimates below age 2;6
are listed in the table as < 2;6. For the analyses, any age
equivalency score listed as < 2;6 was coded as 2;5. Six
children (five with HL) were coded as having PPVT age
equivalencies as 2;5. No recoding was necessary for the
ROWPVT as age equivalences are provided down to 1;1.
As with the standard scores, we entered the age equivalen-
cies into a mixed-model ANOVA where hearing status
was the between-subjects factors and test type and
test time were the within subjects factors. There was a
main effect of hearing status, F(1, 60) = 28.92, p < .001.
Age equivalencies were higher for the NH children (M =
55.37 months, SD = 13.11) than for the children with HL
(M = 42.39 months, SD = 10.62). There was also a
main effect of time, F(1, 60) = 94.65, p < .001. Age
Figure 1. Standard scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWVPT) by
children with hearing loss or with normal hearing at T1 and T2.
1614 American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology • Vol. 32 • 1610–1619 • July 2023
equivalencies were higher at T2 (M = 53.12 months, SD =
13.11) than at T1 (M = 44.64 months, SD = 12.70). There
was no main effect of test nor any significant interactions
(see Figure 2).
Device Type
To explore whether device type influenced children’s
vocabulary levels, we first limited the sample to just the
children who used hearing aids (17 children) and who used
cochlear implants (11 children). Entering these data into a
mixed-model ANOVA where device type was the within-
subjects factor and test type and test time were the
between-subjects factors revealed only a main effect of
time F(1, 24) = 8.62, p = .01. As in the other analyses,
scores at T2 (M = 96.19, SD = 14.60) were higher than
scores at T1 (M = 91.69, SD = 13.13). There was no main
effect of device type nor any significant interactions (see
Figure 3).
Discussion
We found no significant differences between the tests
when comparing their standard scores. Similarly, we
found no differences between the ROWPVT and PPVT’s
calculation of age equivalencies. There was also no differ-
ence between the scores obtained by children who used
Figure 2. Age equivalencies on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWPVT)
by children with hearing loss or with normal hearing at T1 and T2.

hearing aids and children who used cochlear implants. We interpret these findings to support the use of
However, there was a significant effect of time for both either the ROWPVT or the PPVT in clinical practice,
standard scores and age equivalencies, potentially indicat- although caution should be used if testing vocabulary fre-
ing a susceptibility to practice effects. quently. The PPVT includes two test forms, which are

Figure 3. Standard scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWVPT) for
children who use hearing aids and children who use cochlear implants at T1 and T2.

Ingvalson et al.: Comparing the PPVT and ROWPVT 1615

meant to mitigate retest effects. Children in our study
receive a different PPVT version on each assessment, and
version order is counter-balanced by participant. Despite
these precautions, the PPVT was shown here to be as sus-
ceptible to test–retest effects as the ROWPVT, evidenced
by the lack of a Test × Time interaction. Although it is
possible that the increases in scores from T1 to T2 are
reflective of vocabulary growth, which can be very rapid in
the preschool period (Dale & Fenson, 1996; Frank et al.,
2017; Song et al., 2015), we note that standard scores are
meant to be sensitive to age-typical growth and we would
not expect a significant change across testing sessions.
The PPVT-5, published in 2018, is more recently
updated than the ROWPVT-4, published in 2011. The
more recent revision of the PPVT is reflected in the inclu-
sion of words such as “emoji,” “texting,” and “tablet.”
Although inclusion of these words may be reflective of
more modern language usage, their inclusion does not sig-
nificantly impact estimates of children’s vocabulary rela-
tive to the established norms. Thus, concerns about
updated vocabulary items need not drive clinicians’ test
selection, provided the most recent versions of the selected
test are used.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that SLPs prefer the
PPVT to the ROWPVT. SLPs familiar with both tests
reported a belief that the larger item inventory of the
PPVT provides a better indication of children’s vocabu-
lary knowledge. A preference for the PPVT is supported
by its much higher citation rate in the literature (see Sup-
plemental Material S1). We note that not only does the
PPVT have a larger item inventory but it also has more
stringent ceiling rules, requiring six consecutive incorrect
responses. Our experience indicates that this rule leads to
longer testing times, as children will often know (or cor-
rectly guess) one item out of the six. In this instance,
rules that allow for two correct responses (or guesses)
within the set of incorrect responses, as in the ROWPVT,
can shorten testing time. Having a child progress through
more test items may give the impression that the test is
better at capturing the child’s word knowledge. However,
these differences in raw scores are unlikely to be clini-
cally significant, as the calculated standard scores and
age equivalencies will not differ across tests. Clinicians
may continue to opt to administer the PPVT due to
higher familiarity with the test, but it is unlikely to pro-
vide a meaningfully different vocabulary estimate relative
to the ROWPVT.
Of course, there are many reasons beyond item type
and item inventory that might drive a clinician’s prefer-
ence for one test over another. For example, the fact that
the ROWPVT offers age equivalencies down to 1;0 could
be beneficial when working with children who are
1616 American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology • Vol. 32 • 1610–1619 • July 2023
expected to have very low vocabulary levels, with the
caveat that age equivalencies can be difficult to accurately
interpret (Maloney & Larrivee, 2007; Sullivan et al.,
2014). Similarly, the ROWPVT is normed for children as
young as 2;0, whereas the PPVT is normed for children as
young as 2;6, allowing for earlier assessment of children’s
vocabulary, which could be important for early identifica-
tion of communication disorders. Alternatively, the PPVT
provides a wider range of standard scores, ranging from
20 to 160 relative to < 55 to > 145 for the ROWPVT,
which may make it more appropriate for individuals with
very low or very high vocabularies. Additionally, some
tests may be more amenable to children with communica-
tion disorders. We note that, although there was no signif-
icant interaction between hearing status and test, visual
inspection suggests that children with HL may have higher
standard scores and higher age equivalencies on the
ROWPVT than on the PPVT (this is most apparent in
Figure 3). We can only speculate as to the possible rea-
sons for this. One possible reason is the fact that equiva-
lent standard scores on the two tests require fewer correct
responses (i.e., lower raw scores) for the ROWPVT than
the PPVT, and lower standard scores on the PPVT may
be reflective of fatigue effects. Another possible reason is
that differences in the norming protocols for the two tests,
including the lower norming range for the ROWPVT,
may make the ROWPVT more beneficial for children
with HL. Our data do not provide an indication as to
whether the PPVT or ROWPVT is a more accurate repre-
sentation of vocabulary in children with HL, and we leave
this for future researchers and clinicians to determine.
Additionally, we suggest that the two tests should be com-
pared in additional clinical populations to determine
whether the ROWPVT leads to higher scores across a
variety of communication disorders.
Our data do not speak to expressive vocabulary
tests. Both the ROWPVT and PPVT are paired to an
expressive test, the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabu-
lary Test (EOWPVT) and the Expressive Vocabulary Test
(EVT), respectively. Expressive tests are correlated with
their paired receptive tests, with a correlation coefficient
of .76 for the PPVT and EVT (Pearson Clinical)
and .89 for the ROWPVT and EOWPVT (Michalec &
Henninger, 2011).
In a recent study investigating the impacts of early
intervention services on children with HL, Rudge et al.
(2022) found that children’s vocabulary levels were within
normal limits. Our findings are in line with these data, as
the children with HL in our sample had standard scores
within normal limits for both the PPVT and ROWPVT.
However, although scores were within the normal range,
they were significantly lower than the standard scores for
the children with NH. This is also consistent with previous
research, where multiple studies have found significant
deficits in vocabulary levels for children with HL relative
to children with NH (for a meta-analysis, see Lund,
2016). Both groups of children showed growth in vocabu-
lary between T1 and T2, but they grew at similar rates,
evidenced by the lack of an interaction between test time
and hearing status. Because children with HL and children
with NH are growing their vocabularies at similar rates,
it is unlikely that the children with HL will catch up
(Nicholas & Geers, 2007; Nittrouer et al., 2012). As these
assessments were only 6 months apart, it is possible that
children with HL will show steeper rates of growth as pre-
school progresses that would allow them to catch up with
their peers with NH, but it is more likely that additional
intervention will be needed if vocabulary levels for chil-
dren with HL are to match those of children with NH
(Alqraini & Paul, 2020; Antia et al., 2021; Lund, 2018;
Moeller, 2000).
Limitations
Socioeconomic data were collected via parental
questionnaire and approximately half of families declined
to provide these data. Not only does this limit the sample
size for SES but it is also probable that families who
choose not to provide these data differ from those that
do. Difficulties recruiting and retaining racially, ethnically,
and socioeconomically diverse samples are well docu-
mented (Huer & Saenz, 2003; Lander et al., 2019), limit-
ing our ability to determine how these factors relate to
vocabulary development for children with HL. We will
continue to seek to recruit a representative, diverse sam-
ple, and to obtain accurate estimates of socioeconomic
status, which we hope will allow us to further explore
these questions in the future.
Although data collection is ongoing, at this time, only
T1 and T2 assessments were available. We therefore cannot
make any statements regarding longitudinal vocabulary
growth. Additional time points would allow us to determine
whether vocabulary growth rates for preschoolers with HL
allow them to catch up to their peers with NH, data that
could have important implications for intervention.
Conclusions
We found no significant differences between the
PPVT-5 and ROWPVT-4 on standard score or age equiv-
alencies. Although children with NH consistently had
higher scores than children with HL, within each hearing-
status, grouping standard scores were equivalent. How-
ever, we found a significant effect of test time on both
standard scores and age equivalencies, potentially indica-
tive of practice effects. We argue that clinicians can there-
fore be confident that both tests provide a valid estimate
of children’s vocabulary knowledge, at least for children
who are typically developing and children with HL who
are spoken language users.
Data Availability Statement
The data sets generated during this study are avail-
able from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by NIH grant R01DC017984
(PIs: Ingvalson, Grieco-Calub, Perry, VanDam). We wish to
thank Child’s Voice, The Debbie School, The HOPE
School of Spokane, Listen & Talk, and the McGaw
YMCA for assisting in data collection. We also wish to
thank the families whose children participated.
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