Background : Research on the use of dynamic assessment (DA) of different aspects of expressive language has yielded promising results in terms of its use in distinguishing between language difference and language disorder and in informing language intervention. Aims: The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a DA of receptive vocabulary which could be adopted with preschool children when a concern was raised about their language. Methods: In this study, two DA procedures were developed for use with children who had been referred to speech and language therapy (SLT). Both procedures incorporated static measures of receptive vocabulary (the BPVS) and of non-verbal cognitive ability (the BAS) as well as dynamic measures of children’s ability to establish new word-referent matches. The first procedure was used with 40 pre-school children who had been referred to SLT services. Thirty seven of these children were followed up and re-assessed using the BPVS after a six months waiting period, in order to monitor their progress in receptive vocabulary. The second procedure was adopted with 15 pre-school children within two nurseries. Ten of the children had been referred to SLT. The qualitative and quantitative information obtained using this second procedure was fed back to the speech and language therapists and school staff who worked with the referred children. All of the children were re-assessed using the DA procedure after a six month waiting period. Learning support assistants (LSAs) also rated children’s progress at this time. Results: Both procedures were found to add quantitative and qualitative information which was not available through static assessments. With the first procedure a combination of static and dynamic measures at Time 1 was found to possess greater predictive validity than the static (BPVS) measure of receptive vocabulary alone. This was particularly the case with children achieving low scores (below the 25th percentile) on the BPVS at Time 1. The second procedure provided greater qualitative information regarding children’s word learning potential in naturalistic settings. A wider range of quantitative and psychometric measures were also derived from the second DA procedure and DA ratings were also found to correlate with measures of children’s progress at time 2 (BPVS and LSA’s ratings). Discussion: The quantitative and qualitative results are combined in order to discuss implications for assessment, clinical decision-making and intervention with pre-school children referred to SLT
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:507259 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Camilleri, Bernard |
| Publisher | City University London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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