Evaluation of the validity of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences with 44 children with Down syndrome and 48 typically developing children established the validity of this parental measure of vocabulary development for children with Down syndrome and confirmed its validity for typically developing children.…

The internal reliability and concurrent validity of the Play Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) was compared to that of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory with 170 deaf or hard of hearing infants and toddlers. The PAQ was found to be a useful nonverbal tool that assesses symbolic play behaviors and demonstrates a parallel development with…

The scores of 11 non-handicapped kindergarten children on the Pragmatic Protocol (used in assessing language-handicapped children) were correlated with their ratings by five experienced judges on a 7-point equal-appearing interval scale of communicative competence. The concurrent validity of the Protocol and interobserver reliability were…

This paper examines the validity of Vygotsky's interpretation of the private speech (PS) phenomenon on the basis of findings reported in the literature. A review of available findings provided support for an age-related shift from overt to covert means of verbal self-regulation and for an interpsychological to intrapsychological shift in the…

This study examined test characteristics of the Pediatric Language Acquisition Screening Tool for Early Referral-Revised (PLASTER-R), a set of developmental questionnaires for children 3 to 60 months of age. The PLASTER-R was moderately to highly successful in identifying children within normal limits for language development. Test-retest…

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…

Two studies investigated the developmental trends and concurrent validity of the Language Proficiency Profile-2 (LPP-2), a measure of language and communication skills for deaf children. Results indicate that the LPP-2 has good utility not only as a measure of overall language development but also as a predictor of achievement for English language…

Evaluation of the Kent Scoring Adaptation, which determines developmental ages in several domains based on an infant's performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, with 27 at-risk infants supported the concurrent validity of the cognitive, language, and, to a degree, social domains of the Kent procedure but not the fine and gross motor…

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)

Evaluation of the computerized preschool language screening test (KIDTALK) with 41 low socioeconomic status preschoolers resulted in recommendations for further enhancement of this tool by incorporating dynamic assessment components and for continued investigation of its validity with culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers. (Contains…

The study compared results of the Preschool Language Scale, administered to 214 rural and 214 suburban children in Nebraska. Both groups scored above age level, but a higher percentage of rural children failed a wide range of verbal ability and auditory comprehension items. The scale did not meet criteria for nonbiased, ecologically valid…

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…

This study found that three oral discourse genres (script, picture description, and replica play narration) were able to characterize development in discourse abilities in 6 children (ages 5-7) with brain injury and 43 nondisabled children. Brain-injured children produced shorter discourse performances with more off-task talk but showed…

This study evaluated the validity of language-assessment instruments with Native American children, ages 3 to 5. Results indicated that the Preschool Language Scale-3 provides a valid assessment of the receptive and expressive language skills of 3- and 4-year-old Native-American children. However, use of this scale with 5-year-old Native Americans…

Two parent report inventories geared at assessing language skills in toddlers are examined, in terms of reliability, validity, and application. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Toddlers and the Language Development Survey are compared and their combined use in handicap identification is discussed. (PB)