Validating the Malaysian Mandarin paediatric speech perception (MyMaPS) test: examining age sensitivity and test-retest reliability

The Malaysian Mandarin Paediatric Speech Perception (MyMaPS) test was developed to assess Mandarin-speaking children in Malaysia, a multilingual country in Southeast Asia (Lim et al., 2021). However, the digitized materials have not been validated yet among Malaysian Mandarin-speaking children. Therefore, further examinations are needed to validate the MyMaPS test. The current cross-sectional study is an extension of the Lim et al. (2021) study. In the current study, we examined the age effects and test-retest reliability of the MyMaPS test among Mandarin-speaking children (N = 136) aged 3;4-6;5 years old. Participants were grouped into four age groups (3-, 4-, 5-, 6-year-old) with equal numbers and gender distribution. Participants were assessed using the MyMaPS test which contains five subcategories (Category 1-5): Speech pattern perception (C1), Spondee perception (C2), Vowel perception (C3), Consonant perception (C4), and Tone perception (C5). The Tone perception (C5) subcategory is further divided into six subtests according to the tonal contrasts. The MyMaPS test was repeated among 20% of the participants to examine test-retest reliability. This study found significant age effects (p < .05) for all subcategories (C1 - C5) in the MyMaPS test. Generally, the 5- to 6-year-old groups performed significantly better than the 3- and 4-year-old groups, particularly in consonant perception (C4) and tone perception (C5). Intraclass correlation coefficient values (.50 - .88) suggested moderate to good test-retest reliability. The results of this study suggested that the MyMaPS test could be a suitable and reliable test for evaluating the Mandarin speech perception ability among Malaysian Chinese-speaking children.