Formal Language Assessment Research Articles

P3‐220: ADAS‐cog: Rationale for computerized cognitive testing

Since only a few points' difference distinguishes treatment groups in Alzheimer's clinical trials, errors put trial outcomes at risk. The initial publication and subsequent ADAS-cog manuals do not provide great detail on administration procedures, nor on rating language or drawings, and the global language items require formal language assessment skills typical raters do not have. Despite training and certification programs, raters make errors; some are identified and addressed in central monitoring programs. An independent blinded review by a neuropsychologist of a sample of ADAS-cog data from a phase 2 clinical trial in subjects with Mild to Moderate Probable AD was requested to determine the quality of the data. The review revealed a pattern of errors typical of paper and pencil tests that would be precluded by computerized testing. Review of a sample of 102 subjects, 6 visits each, focused on accuracy of the 10 psychometric item scores for each ADAS-cog 13, the three global language ratings were not reviewed for accuracy. Not all errors were counted: Identifying Constructional Praxis errors was minimized as scoring is subjective, discordance between Orientation scoring and written responses was not counted. 220 (3.7%) ADAS-cog psychometric item scores were incorrect. Four items accounted for most of the errors, and some sites contributed disproportionately to the number of errors: Remembering Test Instructions (49% of the 220 incorrect item scores; 30% of the sites made 84% of these errors), Word Recognition (22%; 8.5% of sites made 69% of errors), Digit Cancellation (15%; 11% of sites made 45% of errors). International sites made more errors than US sites. Constructional Praxis accounted for 10% of the errors with wide variation in what was considered correct/incorrect. Computerized edit checks comparing Word Recall, Delayed Word Recall, and Word Recognition identified potential scoring of correct rather than incorrect responses.

Case report: An approach to the patient with reading difficulties in the primary care setting

A 79-year old right-handed gentleman was admitted to hospital with a right homonymous quandrantanopia associated with pure alexia (alexia without agraphia). His computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging revealed an ischemic stroke in the left occipital region. Etiological investigations were unrevealing and the cause of his stroke remains unclear. The alexia was characterized by covert letter-by-letter reading with word length effect accompanied by phonological sound spelling errors and a mild visual anomia. While formal language and reading assessments exist (i.e., by a speech–language pathologist), these are not always widely available or are difficult to administer by a physician in a primary care setting. The purpose of the present paper is to describe an informal bedside approach to the patient presenting with reading difficulties with the goal of identifying patients with alexia for formal language assessment and rehabilitation.

Eliciting Proto‐Imperatives and Proto‐Declaratives in Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Background Although high‐structured elicitation tasks have been shown to be efficient means to sample communication in children with intellectual disabilities, their validity and reliability remain to be evaluated. The aims of this study were threefold: (i) to evaluate the eliciting potential, (ii) to examine the utterance forms of proto‐imperative and proto‐declarative intentions, and (iii) to evaluate the reliability of two high‐structured elicitation tasks.Methods Twenty‐eight children with intellectual disabilities participated in a standard assessment battery, consisting of a formal language assessment, a parent questionnaire, an elicitation task for proto‐imperatives, and an elicitation task for proto‐declaratives.Results The elicitation tasks elicited significantly more proto‐imperatives than proto‐declaratives; with proto‐imperatives being predominantly expressed with gestures and proto‐declaratives predominantly with vocalizations. Furthermore, medium to large correlations were found between the elicitation tasks and the other communication and language instruments.Conclusions Several factors need to be considered to account for the observed differences in frequency and utterance forms of the elicited proto‐imperatives versus proto‐declaratives. Nevertheless, the results overall suggest that the elicitation tasks for proto‐imperatives and proto‐declaratives can be reliably used in children with intellectual disabilities.

Using Assessment to Inform Instruction in Cherokee Language Revitalisation

Language loss is a concern for the Cherokee Nation in northeastern Oklahoma. As part of language revitalisation efforts, in 2001 Cherokee Nation opened the Cherokee Immersion Preschool in which teachers use only Cherokee throughout the day with their monolingual English-speaking students. Based on a study of the Immersion Preschool that spanned six months, this paper describes the positive backwash effects of assessment on practices of teachers in the programme. Specifically, we examine the role that classroom observation coupled with a formal language assessment – the Cherokee Preschool Immersion Language Assessment – played in identifying undeveloped aspects of the children's Cherokee language skills and targeting specific techniques teachers could use to encourage children to communicate more effectively in Cherokee. The findings suggest that beneficial backwash produced by meaningful and well designed assessments has the potential to positively inform teachers toward improving classroom instructional practice. The Cherokee Immersion Preschool's experience with language assessment has implications for Native American communities implementing early childhood immersion for language revitalisation purposes.

Putney Auditory Single Word Yes/No Assessment (PASWORD). Development of a reliable test of yes/no at a single word level in patients unable to participate in assessments requiring a specific motor response: an exploratory study

There are very few formal language assessments aimed at the very severely neurologically impaired individual. These individuals often have multiple deficits on top of their communication impairment that demand a novel approach to assessment. The authors set out to devise a tool (PASWORD) to enable professionals in this field to screen their clients' ability to understand and respond to very simple, closed questions by using their preferred modality. PASWORD assessment was examined for its reliability as a tool for determining whether profoundly neurologically impaired individuals could indicate yes or no reliably to simple closed questions. The assessment comprises 20 high-frequency objects that can be presented visually, auditorily or in the tactile modality, depending on the subject's abilities. Subjects are then asked a one-word level closed question related to the object and were asked to give a yes or no response. Seventy control subjects with no neurological impairment first underwent the PASWORD test to assess for ambiguities in the test items (group 1, n = 74). Neurologically impaired subjects at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in the two experimental groups were allocated according to the opinion of the experienced multidisciplinary team, which observed the subjects closely over a period of time, in different contexts. Those that the team agreed were reliably able to answer simple yes/no questions on observation (group 2, n = 9) and those the team agreed could not indicate yes/no reliably to closed questions (group 3, n = 7). The results of the PASWORD were then compared with the original opinion of the team. Groups 2 and 3 were studied on two occasions to examine test-retest reliability. There were no real ambiguities in the test items and the results of the PASWORD reflected the opinion of the experienced multidisciplinary team. As there are no other tests of single-word closed questions, which can be presented in any of three modalities and during which the subject can respond in any augmentative or alternative fashion, the opinion of the team at the Royal Hospital, a centre of excellence for neurorehabilitation, was used against which to measure reliability. The findings imply that PASWORD is a useful screening tool when assessing the basic language skills of neurologically impaired individuals, whose extensive physical, linguistic and cognitive deficits often render the administration of more traditional language assessments impossible.

Aphasia Owing to Subcortical Brain Infarcts in Childhood

The aim of this study was to further define the clinical features of subcortical aphasia in children with deep brain infarcts and to define the sequelae associated with childhood strokes. We retrospectively studied nine children with left subcortical brain infarcts who presented with acquired language disorder and underwent language investigations based on standardized tests. Stroke in these patients involved the left internal capsule, lenticular or thalamic nuclei, or a combination of these. Early aphasic manifestations following the deep cerebral infarcts affected language expression. These included mutism, nonfluent speech, word finding difficulties, and phonemic and semantic paraphasia. Speech comprehension was generally more preserved. All patients subsequently improved, although variably; sequelae such as dysfluency, word finding difficulties, and written language learning impairment could be detected through standardized tests in six of them (all younger than 6 years at the time of the infarct). Two of the three remaining patients (both older than 6 years at the time of the infarct) had a full recovery. Our study confirms the concept of childhood subcortical aphasia, depicts the linguistic profile in these patients, and sustains the indication of systematic formal language assessment during the follow-up of all children with subcortical infarct involving the dominant hemisphere.

Talking Yourself Out of Being Shy: Shyness, Expressive Vocabulary, and Socioemotional Adjustment in Preschool

The goal of the present study was to explore the role of expressive vocabulary as a moderator in the relation between shyness and maladjustment in early child- hood. Participants were 82 preschool children (39 males, 43 females). Mothers rated children's shyness at the start of the preschool year. Children were inter- viewed individually to assess expressive vocabulary and self-perceptions. Near the end of the school year, teachers completed ratings of child adjustment. No significant relation was found between shyness and expressive vocabulary. However, shyness and expressive vocabulary were found to interact in the pre- diction of indices of maladjustment. Specifically, increased expressive vocabu- lary appeared to act as a buffer against certain negative outcomes related to shyness. Implications are discussed in terms of the possible effect of social con- text on shy children's performance on formal language assessments, as well as the potential role of verbal abilities in the coping skills of shy children.

Performance of English-speaking Indians on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test

A number of Indian children receive their formal schooling in a language other than their first language. Irrespective of the language spoken at home, these children attend English-medium schools. If children with such a background require speech-language assessment, it is only appropriate that the assessment be carried out in English but, with such clients, the clinician lacks the necessary tools for formal language assessment, as there are no tests for assessment of English-speaking Indians. It would be ideal to construct a new test for this population. However, considering the various difficulties encountered in the construction of new tests, an immediate solution would be to modify an existing test to make it suitable for the Indian population. Keeping this in view, the present study was carried out to analyse the performance of English-speaking Indian subjects in different age ranges on form 'L' of the revised Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Subjects between 10;0 to 10;11 years, 11;0 to 11;11 years, 12;0 to 12;11 years, 13;0 to 13;11 years, 14;0 to 14;11 years, 17;0 to 17;11 years, 18;0 to 18;11 years and 19;0 to 19;11 years from different schools and colleges in the suburbs of Mumbai were considered. Results indicate an age trend in the development of vocabulary skills, such that vocabulary increases with an increase in age. However, Indian subjects are found to be performing at a lower level as compared with their chronological age. Furthermore, error analysis indicates that this test cannot be considered appropriate for use with English-speaking Indians.

Concordance between teacher/therapist opinion and formal language assessment scores in children with language impairment.

As part of a wider study, 242 children attending language units attached to mainstream schools were assessed on a number of formal language assessments. In addition, each child's teacher was asked to state whether, for each of four areas of language difficulty, the participant exhibited this impairment. The four areas were: articulation, phonology, syntax/morphology and semantic/pragmatic impairment. This report compares test results between children thought by their teacher or therapist to show each impairment and those not thought clinically to show the difficulty. Investigations into suitable cut-off scores for the tests used were also examined using level of agreement between the two modes of assessment as criteria. For articulation, phonology and syntax/morphology, teacher opinion was found to discriminate significantly on at least some formal tests. However, for children with semantic/pragmatic impairment, no tests used identified their problems. Furthermore, by use of 25th centile cut-off scores, 66% agreement levels between teacher and test groupings were found in all but the group with semantic/pragmatic impairments. The importance and limitations of analysis of teacher-test concordance is discussed as well as the current lack of suitable formal assessment material for semantic and pragmatic language impairment.

Methods of Language Assessment

Public school clinicians in California were surveyed regarding methods for assessing the language of children between 4 and 9 years old. Information was obtained about the use of informal and formal language assessment methods and factors that influence assessment methods. The findings indicated that a majority of clinicians use published test instruments in combination with other formal and informal methods. New methods are incorporated based upon information gained from workshops, conferences, fellow clinicians, and research. Frequency of use scores and rankings are reported for published language assessment instruments mentioned by at least 10% of respondents.

A Comparison of Language Screening Methods

No AccessLanguage, Speech, and Hearing Services in SchoolsResearch Article1 Oct 1980A Comparison of Language Screening Methods Gordon R. Dodge Gordon R. Dodge Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461.1104.214 SectionsAboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Administrators and speech clinicians are concerned about the amount of professional time necessary for language screening in preschool screening programs. This study compares the effectiveness of the language sub-test of the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) (Frankenburg and Dobbs, 1970) and the Preschool Language Scale (PLS) (Zimmerman, Steiner, and Evatt, 1969) for preschool language screening. Four hundred eighty-six preschool children were screened with the DDST and PLS. Children who failed the screening were referred for a formal language assessment. The results indicate that the DDST is slightly more effective than the PLS in identifying preschool children who need remedial language services, implications from these findings are that the DDST does not need to be supplemented with an additional language screening instrument and that volunteer language screening with the DDST as effective as language screening by professional speech clinicians. Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited ByLanguage, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools27:4 (330-332)1 Oct 1996The Efficiency of the Revised Denver Developmental Screening Test as a Language Screening ToolJennifer Feeney and John Bernthal Volume 11Issue 4October 1980Pages: 214-217 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library HistoryReceived: Jul 12, 1979Accepted: Dec 10, 1979 Published in issue: Oct 1, 1980 Metrics Downloaded 21 times Topicsasha-topicsleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & PermissionsCopyright © 1980 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF DownloadLoading ...