Over- and underdiagnosis of language and literacy problems are common with low-socioeconomic status ethnically and racially diverse children. In recent years, a number of alternative assessment procedures have been developed that reduce some of the biases inherent in norm-referenced standardized tests. Problems and recent solutions to the use of norm-referenced testing will be discussed, with a focus on processing-dependent and dynamic assessment procedures.

In this study, we examined whether think-aloud procedures would uncover differences in the kinds of inferences generated by average and below-average readers. Participants were 40 third-grade children who were divided into groups of average and below-average readers. All participants completed measures of nonverbal IQ, reading, language, and working memory, and a story comprehension task that consisted of two conditions: listen through and think aloud. The major findings in this study were that (a) average readers generated significantly more explanatory inferences than below-average readers, and (b) comprehension performance as measured by story recall was significantly better for both groups in the think-aloud condition than in the listen-through condition. The discussion addresses the implications of these findings.

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It has been suggested that children who have trouble learning to read may use less effective decoding strategies than children who learn to read typically. The present investigation examined reading miscues (errors) made by typically developing children and children who demonstrated below-average language and reading abilities to answer the following questions: (a) Do typically developing children and children with below-average language and reading skills evidence similar types of miscues while reading aloud? (b) Do typically developing children make more grapho-phonemically similar errors (in which the error resembles the text word in two or more phonemes) and more nonsense-word errors than children with below-average language and reading ability and, (c) What is the relationship between the nature of reading miscues and comprehension performance? Results suggested that typically developing children made more miscues that preserved the meaning of the text than children with below-average language and reading abilities. Groups were equally likely to make errors that were grapho-phonemically similar and/or nonsense words. Comprehension performance for both groups was best predicted by omission of content words and phonologically similar real-word errors that maintained the meaning of the text. Analysis of oral-reading errors may be useful in prescribing specific intervention to improve automaticity and efficiency in reading for children with language-learning disorders.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether an adapted stimulus elicitation format would reduce the amount of final consonant absence in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers and to determine the extent to which the adapted and standard response formats would differ in their predictions of membership in a delayed and a typical group. Findings revealed that the alternate response mode resulted in statistically significant decreases in the use of final consonant absence and that it was less likely than the standard response mode to penalize the AAVE speaker to a degree that was clinically significant.