DOI: 10.60641/62ys-w315
title: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Task (PPVT-III-NL)

description: YOUth is a large-scale longitudinal cohort study following children from the city of Utrecht and its surrounding areas in their development from pregnancy until early adulthood. The YOUth cohort focuses on neurocognitive development involved in two core characteristics of behavioral development: social competence and behavioral control. YOUth includes children from the general population to cover the whole range of variation in behavioral development, ranging from uncomplicated development, through problem behavior, to psychiatric disorders. To understand why some children develop problematic behavior, and others show resilience, YOUth measures a broad range of biological, child-related and environmental determinants.

YOUth conducts repeated measurements at regular intervals (i.e. 'waves'). Specifically, the study has two inclusion moments: YOUth Baby & Child and YOUth Child & Adolescent. YOUth applies a flexible longitudinal design to the cohorts, meaning that children are measured at broader age ranges (3-year age ranges) at each wave. The main benefit of the flexible age design is that it provides more detailed information on the neurodevelopmental curves over time.

An extensive data set is generated, including 3D-ultrasound sweeps of the fetal brain, eye tracking, EEG, (f)MRI, computer tasks, cognitive measurements and parent-child observations. We also collect a broad range of questionnaires on behavior, personality, health, lifestyle, parenting, child development, use of (social) media and more. Finally, (umbilical) blood samples, buccal swabs, saliva and hair samples are collected at each visit, and stored in the UMC Utrecht Biobank.
description: The Peabody-Picture vocabulary task (PPVT; Dunn and Dunn, 1981) is a widely used task to evaluate a participant’s vocabulary size for their age, and serves as a proxy of general language performance. It is normed for participants between 2 and 90 years old. On each trial, participants see an array of four pictures and hear a word that matches one of these four. They need to click or point to the correct picture. There are in total 204 trials, presented in sets of 12 trials. Participants start with the set that is age-appropriate for them, with each set increasing in difficulty. They stop once they make more than five or six errors in one set of trials. The total number of trials is thus dependent on the participant’s vocabulary knowledge, and the task should last approximately 10 min.
description: In YOUth, a computerized version of the Dutch version of the PPVT was used (PPVT-III-NL; Dunn and Dunn, 2005). Based on the child’s age, the task began with a predefined set (“instap set”). If the child made 5 or more errors in the start set, the computer switched to an earlier set until the child made fewer than five errors (“start set”). The final set was the set in which the child made nine or more errors (“afbreek set”). The program registered the responses (as correct or incorrect) and reaction times a child made from the start set to the final set. Each word was generally presented via audio just once, but an in-built option allows to present one other token of this word upon the child’s request. 

In the Baby and Child cohort, a touchscreen version of the task was used, and the experimenter stayed with the child throughout the task, giving encouraging but neutral feedback throughout, and determining when to play the sound. In the Child and Adolescent cohort, a computer version was used, and the experimenter was only present during the instruction. In both cases, children first did two practice trials and were instructed to also select a picture when they did not know the answer.