This study found moderately high correlations for performance of 60 children (ages 4-8) on 4 grammatic completion measures: Berry-Talbott Developmental Guide to Comprehension of Grammar, Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities--Grammatic Closure subtest, Test of Language Development (Primary)--Grammatic Completion subtest, and Morphological…

Twenty-one language tests that included norms for children ages 4 and 5 were reviewed for information on 10 psychometric criteria. Administration of the 4 tests meeting the most criteria to 20 preschool children with specific language impairments and 20 controls found that only 1 (the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test) provided…

This study compared differences in preschool children (n=201) clinically diagnosed with specific language impairments (SLI) who were and were not identified through standard psychometric discrepancy criteria. A combination of mean length of utterance, percent structural errors, and chronological age was found to be more useful for predicting a…

The Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) and an expressive language measure were administered to 114 children (aged 24 to 74 months) suspected of developmental difficulties. The DDST did not identify the majority of children who failed the expressive language screening, even after cutoff scores were made more rigorous. (Author/JDD)

The Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language-Revised is intended for use with children ages 3-9 as well as with children and adults with certain disabilities. The test's three sections include Word Classes and Relations, Grammatical Morphemes, and Elaborated Sentences. This paper describes the test's administration, scoring, standardization,…

Noun and verb comprehension of 11 children with cerebral palsy or other motor impairments was assessed by presenting a linguistic stimulus and determining whether the child watched a video event that matched or did not match the stimulus. Subjects, aged 2-6, watched the match significantly more, especially when dynamic visual stimuli were…

This study evaluated 9 computer-generated measures of children's language production, based on 24 children with specific language impairment and 24 normally developing children, ages 24-50 months. Three measures possessed desirable developmental and diagnostic characteristics: mean syntactic length, total number of words, and number of different…

This study, involving 20 children (ages 4-11) with severe hearing impairments, affirmed the content validity of the Clark-Madison Test of Oral Language as a measure of nonwritten expressive language with hearing-impaired children. Performance comparison with hearing individuals revealed a different profile of strengths and weaknesses than did…

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised assesses standard American English receptive vocabulary in individuals, both handicapped and nonhandicapped, ages 2 to 40. This paper describes the test's administration, summation of data, standardization, reliability, and validity. (JDD)

This study compared four commonly used vocabulary tests to screen or identify preschool children for specific language impairment (SLI). Four- and five-year olds with (N=31) and without (N=31) SLI were compared on the tests. Despite moderate to strong inter-test correlations, no test was a strong identifier of SLI. (Author/DB)

This paper provides information concerning preschool narrative development in typically developing North American children, stressing previously documented links between early narrative skills and literacy development. Methods are provided for assessing narrative skills of language-impaired children. The methods involve eliciting from the children…

Twenty-seven American Indian children (ages 4-12), 10 with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and 17 normally developing control subjects, were administered the Test of Language Development. FAS children exhibited depressed performance on most subtests. The older FAS children presented syntactic deficits whereas the younger FAS subjects presented more…

Because eligibility for speech-language services often is based on the relationship between the child's cognitive ability and language performance, this study examined the agreement of measurement practices used in the cognitive referencing model of eligibility determination. Administration of 5 measures to 26 preschool children with delayed…

This study examined the temporal reliability of four quantitative measurements of linguistic behaviors in 20 preschool children observed in a naturalistic setting. Although inadequate reliability was found for the measure which used total number of words, very high reliability coefficients were obtained for the measures which used number of…

Systems for classifying speakers' communicative intents are typically limited in scope, in applicability across the full developmental range of language abilities and disabilities, and in their theoretical foundations. Criteria for an adequate system for analyzing communicative intents are discussed, and a system is proposed which meets those…