The Effect of the Label “Language-Delayed” on Speech-Language Pathologists

The Impact of Clinical Review Bias on Child Language Grammaticality

“…The results of these two studies are in disagreement. Unlike Beasley and Manning (1973), Parsons et al (1989) found evidence of clinical review bias. However, the results of both studies should be interpreted with caution.…”

“…On the other hand, it is also possible to argue that because measurement error is an inherent part of all measurements in research studies, we should control to the best of our abilities for any source of error (e.g., the possibility of bias influencing the results of a study). Previous studies suggest that SLPs and students tend to agree with the diagnostic label given and not the actual language performance of the child (Parsons et al, 1989). Importantly, subjective bias is viewed as a serious threat to the validity of studies examining diagnostic accuracy (Dollaghan & Horner, 2010).…”

“…Studies investigating the effect of clinical review bias must be well developed to be able to capture the bias effect. For example, neither Beasley and Manning (1973) nor Parsons et al (1989) described in detail the stimuli used in their studies. Appropriate stimuli to examine the effect of bias should be susceptible to bias.…”

“…The results of the study showed no differences between the groups on neither objective nor subjective measures. In a similar investigation, Parsons, Russell, Decker, and Tepper (1989) studied a group of 20 undergraduate speech-language pathology students and 20 speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The participants were asked to rate communication behaviors while observing a video recording of either a child with a language disorder or a child with typical language skills.…”