The Diagnostic Accuracy of Four Vocabulary Tests Administered to Preschool-Age Children

Abstract

This study examined the empirical evidence for using four vocabulary tests (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III [Dunn & Dunn, 1997], Receptive One-Word Vocabulary Test [Gardner, 1985], Expressive Vocabulary Test [Williams, 1997], Expressive One-Word Vocabulary Test-Revised [Gardner, 1990]) to screen or identify specific language impairment (SLI) in preschool-age children. Tests were administered to 31 4- and 5-year-old children with SLI and 31 age-matched controls with normal language (NL). All children spoke General American English. Despite moderate to strong inter-test correlations, no test was a strong identifier of SLI. The group with SLI scored lower than the NL group on each test; however, the individual scores of children with SLI typically fell within the normal range. Vocabulary tests are frequently administered to determine whether a child's language skills require further evaluation (screening), as a method of identifying SLI in children, or simply to describe aspects of language functioning. These purposes for administering a vocabulary test require various forms of empirical evidence in support of their use. Our data support construct validity for the four vocabulary tests examined, but do not support their use for identification purposes. Clinicians must apply a degree of sophistication in evaluating the evidence presented for test validity relative to the purposes for which the test will be administered. Unfortunately, although many test manuals offer inter-test correlations or statistically significant group differences as evidence of construct validity, they often omit data that would support common clinical uses, such as screening or identification.

Global developmental delay and its relationship to cognitive skills

“…First, expressive vocabulary was evaluated by way of the Expressive OneWord Picture Vocabulary Test (third edition), a standardized and validated test of expressive vocabulary in pre-school children. 16,17 Scores were compared with age-appropriate norms and converted into centiles. Form and use (pragmatics) of language, although assessed in the clinic, were not scored objectively and thus could not be retained in the analysis.…”

Reducing Test Bias Through Dynamic Assessment of Children's Word Learning Ability

“…We employed classification analysis in order to examine the diagnostic accuracy of each measure and the measures in combination. This procedure entails calculating how well individual children are classified by the language measure, rather than estimating whether children as a group demonstrate significantly different test score means (Gray, Plante, Vance, & Henrichsen, 1999). Plante and Vance (1994) suggested that language tests that discriminate between children with and without language impairment with an accuracy above 90% are considered "good" discriminators and those that discriminate with an accuracy between 80 and 90% are considered "fair" discriminators.…”

Effectiveness of Environmental Education on Environmental Knowledge of Kindergarten Children in Rasht City

“…The PPVT measures language abilities as an example of vocabulary knowledge with children as young as age two. Studies using the PPVT indicated that kindergarten children can identify correct words by pointing at pictures [22]. Picture interview designs have been used in studies measuring children's environmental knowledge [15].…”