This study added to the growing body of literature demonstrating a correlation between socioeconomic status and performance on standardized vocabulary tests.
This study presented the findings and implications for clinicians, educators, and policy makers after recording all interactions between caregivers and children, from age 7 months to 3 years old, in different socioeconomic classes for 1 hour per week.
The confidence interval is a range of values surrounding the score obtained from the administration of a standardized test.
A lack of culturally or linguistically sensitive assessments and/or evaluators can lead to high rates of disproportionality in referrals to special services.
A normal distribution, also called a bell curve, occurs when variables (i.e., test scores) plotted on a graph fall into a regular distribution around a single mean. In a normal distribution, about 96% of the scores will fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean.
Linguistic bias can be bias towards speakers of other languages or dialects, or towards bilingual speakers and results in inaccurate assessment of children from linguistic backgrounds other than Standard American English.
Validity refers to the degree to which an item is measuring what it’s actually supposed to be measuring.
Even though standardized test scores should not be used to determine or diagnose disability, quantification is required to demonstrate that a child should receive services. It is the evaluator’s job to use his or her clinical judgement to determine percentage of delay if it exists.
Language sampling is an essential part of any speech and language evaluation and research has shown it to be less biased against culturally and linguistically diverse children than standardized tests.
Bias towards individuals with disabilities, such as ADHD or cerebral palsy, can result in the mislabeling of these individuals as being language impaired or intellectually disabled.
