A proposed strategy for language assessment advocates a combination of descriptive and formal assessment measures. This approach involves a parent-clinician interview, parent-child observations, clinician-directed formal and nonformal assessment procedures, and a parent-clinician interpretation. An elaborated sample of language assessment is…

The article suggests that comparability, representativeness, and typicality must be considered along with length when collecting language samples. A framework is offered for selecting or devising tasks, and one successful battery is described which has been field tested on language-disordered children with syntax problems. (CL)

The author reviews methods of studying individuals in context (ecological, phenomenological, and system approaches) and offers suggestions for implementing these approaches in identification, assessment, and intervention procedures for language-disordered children. (CL)

The article outlines strategies for improving the assessment of language at the school level through staff involvement in designing and implementing a school based language assessment program. (Author)

A study with 10 developmentally delayed children between the ages of 52 and 80 months found that test-retest samples resulted in greater variability for lexical and morphological measurements than split-half transcripts. It was also found that 50-utterance sample segments contained 70-80 percent of the lexical information found in 100-utterance…

The Social Interactive Coding System (SICS) assesses the continuous verbal interactions of preschool children as a function of play areas, addressees, script codes, and play levels. This paper describes the 26 subjects and the setting involved in SICS development, coding definitions and procedures, training procedures, reliability, sample…

The article presents a protocol for the assessment of prelinguistic intentional communication with young and/or severely language-impaired children. A set of tasks and scoring procedures are presented for the elicitation of proto-declarative and proto-imperative behaviors. Data are presented to support reliability. (Author/CL)

The paper explores several issues which effect the accurate assessment of language and reading disorders and, thus, of discrepancy between expected potential and actual achievement. For related information see EC 132 758-768. (Author)

The report describes activities and results of a project to identify communication characteristics that would help match augmentative communication system (ACS) capabilities to the needs of nonoral children. Ss had a variety of handicapping conditions, including cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities. Introductory sections cover the…

The article proposes a cooperative assessment strategy with language impaired children to assist the interdisciplinary psychoeducational evaluation and planning team to function as a unit by (1) agreeing on a theoretical framework, (2) cooperating in planning the assessment, (3) raising questions for the assessment, and (4) making cooperative…

Two studies addressing the clinical validity of discrepancy criteria for identification of children with developmental language disorders (DLD) are reported: one with 256 preschoolers clinically defined as DLD, and one with 363 8-year-old controls. Factors contributing to underidentification in Study 1 and overidentification in Study 2 are…

This review focuses on methods used to identify language impairment in 72 published research studies from 1983-88. Test data were most frequently used, and expressive and receptive language were routinely assessed. Research problems included the lack of clarity regarding the specific number and identity of tests used and use of incomplete tests.…

Research procedures used to evaluate the intelligence of children with specific language impairment are reviewed. Almost half of the 167 studies did not include adequate descriptions of intelligence assessment. (Author/JDD)

Culturally specific behaviors must be considered in the pre-referral phase of assessing culturally diverse/limited-English-proficient students. Inferences regarding the reasons for students' performance reflect the knowledge base acquired by the school staff concerning a student's culture. Evaluative questions can gather data to assure non-biased…