Expressive Morphosyntactic Probe (EMP): Administration and Scoring Instructions, Answer Sheets, and Stimulus Items

The Expressive Morphosyntactic Probe (EMP) is a screening tool that evaluates children’s ability to produce core English grammatical forms commonly targeted in intervention for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The EMP elicits past tense -ed, singular present -s, plural present unmarked -s, progressive is/are + verb-ing, and auxiliary do/does questions through picture-based prompts featuring two characters, Qubo and Meepa. Each of the two versions, Form A and Form B, includes 56 items that vary in verb frequency and phonological complexity to allow for repeated use.

The EMP was developed by the Child Language Intervention Lab at the University of Minnesota as part of the NIH-funded SMART Explicit Study (R01DC017927), which examines explicit and implicit grammatical instruction. These materials are released to provide researchers and clinicians with a tool for evaluating morphosyntactic skills in children aged 5 to 9 years. No participant data are included.