Reducing Bias in Language Assessment

Campbell, Thomas F.; Dollaghan, Chris; Needleman, Herbert L.; Janosky, Janine E.

doi:10.1044/jslhr.4003.519

Cited by 249 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Deficits in tense morphology may not be present in all individuals with LI, whereas speakers of nonmainstream English dialects may perform poorly on tense morpheme tasks due to dialect differences rather than LI (Oetting & McDonald, 2001). Processing skills measured by nonword repetition may be less dependent on linguistic knowledge, and hence more dialect neutral (Campbell, Dollaghan, Needleman, & Janosky, 1997). However, poor performance on nonword repetition tasks has been reported for individuals who no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for LI (Bishop et al, 1996) and for individuals with reading deficits without a prior or concurrent diagnosis of LI (Kamhi & Catts, 1986).…”

Section: Diagnostic Accuracymentioning

confidence: 95%

Evaluation of Three Proposed Markers for Language Impairment in English: A Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies

Pawłowska

2014

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Section: Diagnostic Accuracymentioning

confidence: 95%

Evaluation of Three Proposed Markers for Language Impairment in English: A Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies

Pawłowska

2014

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…An advantage of using a nonword repetition task is that it appears to be culturally and linguistically unbiased because it is processing dependent rather than language dependent. Investigators have documented that children from various cultural backgrounds performed similarly on nonword repetition measures (Campbell, Dollaghan, Needleman, & Janosky, 1997;Ellis Weismer et al, 2000). A number of investigators have suggested that nonword repetition is a potential clinical marker of language impairment (Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998;Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998;Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Assessment of School-Age Children’s Narrative Ability: An Experimental Investigation of Classification Accuracy

Peña

Gillam

Malek

et al. 2006

J Speech Lang Hear Res

141

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Two experiments examined reliability and classification accuracy of a narration-based dynamic assessment task.Purpose-The first experiment evaluated whether parallel results were obtained from stories created in response to 2 different wordless picture books. If so, the tasks and measures would be appropriate for assessing pretest and posttest change within a dynamic assessment format. The second experiment evaluated the extent to which children with language impairments performed differently than typically developing controls on dynamic assessment of narrative language.Method-In the first experiment, 58 1st-and 2nd-grade children told 2 stories about wordless picture books. Stories were rated on macrostructural and microstructural aspects of language form and content, and the ratings were subjected to reliability analyses. In the second experiment, 71 children participated in dynamic assessment. There were 3 phases: a pretest phase, in which children created a story that corresponded to 1 of the wordless picture books from Experiment 1; a teaching phase, in which children attended 2 short mediation sessions that focused on storytelling ability; and a posttest phase, in which children created a story that corresponded to a second wordless picture book from Experiment 1. Analyses compared the pretest and posttest stories that were told by 2 groups of children who received mediated learning (typical and language impaired groups) and a no-treatment control group of typically developing children from Experiment 1.Results-The results of the first experiment indicated that the narrative measures applied to stories about 2 different wordless picture books had good internal consistency. In Experiment 2, typically developing children who received mediated learning demonstrated a greater amount of pretest to posttest change than children in the language impaired and control groups. Classification analysis indicated better specificity and sensitivity values for measures of response to intervention (modifiability) and posttest storytelling than for measures of pretest storytelling. Observation of modifiability was the single best indicator of language impairment. Posttest measures and modifiability together yielded no misclassifications. Conclusion-The first experiment supported the use of 2 wordless picture books as stimulus materials for collecting narratives before and after mediation within a dynamic assessment paradigm. The second experiment supported the use of dynamic assessment for accurately identifying language impairments in school-age children. Traditionally, speech-language pathologists diagnose children with language impairments (LI) by comparing their performance on standardized tests with the performance of their same-age peers (Tomblin, Records, & Zhang, 1996). There is growing dissatisfaction with single-time assessment because of the potential for measurement error (Bracken, 1988;McCauley & Swisher, 1984a, 1984bPlante & Vance, 1994) as well as the interfering effects of potential cultural bias (De...

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“…Although it proposed that the children's performance on NWR task permits accurate classification of children with SLI and same-age peers even when the children spoke a nonstandard dialect of American-English,[47] regarding these incommensurable results, it seems that NWR cannot be introduced confidently as an adequate measure for diagnosis of English preschool children with SLI by itself. It seems necessary therefore to carrying out more studies with larger samples.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review on diagnostic procedures for specific language impairment: The sensitivity and specificity issues

et al. 2016

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Background:Identification of children with specific language impairment (SLI) has been viewed as both necessity and challenge. Investigators and clinicians use different tests and measures for this purpose. Some of these tests/measures have good psychometric properties, but it is not sufficient for diagnostic purposes. A diagnostic procedure can be used for identification a specific population with confidence only when its sensitivity and specificity are acceptable. In this study, we searched for tests/measures with predefined sensitivity and specificity for identification of preschool children with SLI from their typically developing peers.Materials and Methods:A computerized search in bibliographic databases from 2000 to August 2015 was performed with the following keywords: “specific language impairment” or SLI” and “primary language impairment” or ‘PLI’ with at least one of the followings: “diagnosis,” “identification,” “accuracy,” “sensitivity,” and “specificity.” In addition, the related citations and reference lists of the selected articles were considered.Results:The results of reviewing 23 included studies show that the index measures used in studies vary in accuracy with the sensitivity ranging from 16% to 100% and the specificity ranging from 14% to 100%.Conclusion:These varieties in sensitivity and specificity of different tests/measures confirm the necessity of attention to the diagnostic power of tests/measures before their use as diagnostic tool. Further, the results indicate there are some promising tests/measures that the available evidence supports their performances in the diagnosis of SLI in preschool-aged children, yet the place of a reference standard for the diagnosis of SLI is vacant among investigations.

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Reducing Bias in Language Assessment

Cited by 249 publications

References 21 publications

Evaluation of Three Proposed Markers for Language Impairment in English: A Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies

Evaluation of Three Proposed Markers for Language Impairment in English: A Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies

Dynamic Assessment of School-Age Children’s Narrative Ability: An Experimental Investigation of Classification Accuracy

A systematic review on diagnostic procedures for specific language impairment: The sensitivity and specificity issues

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