Termination Norms For Final Words Of Spanish Sentences For Mexican Children

Sentence completion norms are a valuable resource for researchers interested in the study of the effects of context in word recognition processes and language comprehension. This study presents completion norms for 278 sentences-final words in Spanish for Mexican children. These norms were obtained through the cloze method in a sample of 420 students (226 boys and 194 girls) 9 to 12 years old, from fourth to sixth grades of elementary public schools located in Estado de Mexico. Children's task was to read each one of the sentences and completed them with one closing word. According to children's responses, cloze probability of each closing word was calculated for each sentence context. Although the set of sentences included different contextual constraints, subject's responses showed a greater number of sentences with high cloze probability. This corpus can be used in research on language comprehension (both oral and written) in children.