Aptitude, age and cognitive development

In the validation studies of the Modern Language Aptitude Test-Elementary (MLAT-E) (Carroll & Sapon 1967) and its Spanish version, the MLAT-ES (Stansfield & Reed 2005), the total scores across grades increase unsteadily. At no point, though, has this increase been discussed. Similar results are found in the present study, which addresses this issue from two viewpoints, age and the supposed stability of language aptitude. The participants in this study are bilingual Catalan-Spanish children in grades from 3 to 7. 325 participants took the MLAT-ES and 304 participants took its Catalan version (MLAT-EC). The analyses of the children’s performance in both tests suggest that the higher the grade, the higher the final score. However, the difference between the means of the total score is consistently larger between grade 3 and 4 than between the other grades. Besides, this increase seems to plateau between grade 6 and 7. Results are discussed in relation to the influence that children’s age and cognitive development in middle childhood seem to have on children’s language aptitude development.