Hi to all. Have been busy “towing the line” at the begining of this school year so haven’t been here for awhile. I have a 5 year old son, diagnosed with Developmental Verbal Apraxia at 18 mo. who was taken out of Special Ed at the end of pre-school with what the school said was no need for services. As a side note this was done without my imput and breaking all IDEA regs. Beginning of this year I again made him a “Focus of Concern” and after a discussion with the Superintendent of our District a couple of weeks ago, and an MTD Team meeting a week after, they agreed to retest him in all areas. (o: For Speech and Language and a difinative diagnosis of Developmental Verbal Apraxia (which the school has ademently said he doesn’t have) they are planning on doing the following tests:
The Test of Language Development- Primary third edition (TOLD-P:3) and a language sample (?)
(ASSET) Assessing Semantic Skills through Everyday Themes
(TEEM) Test for Examining Expressive Morphology
(TAPS-R)Test of Auditory-Perceptual Sills- Revised
(TOPA) Test of Phonological Awareness
Articulation
Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale - Revised, The Apraxia Profile, Speech Sample and Observation and Oral Motor Evaluation.
The Golman-Fristoe Test of Articulation and the Kahn Lewis.
So for those of you that have a good understanding of SLP issues, help me out here please. Are these good tests? How do these evaluations test for and determine the ability of a child in the area of difficulty with multisyllybic words and how do any or all of these aid in the diagnosis of Developmental Verbal Apraxia? Thanks for all your help in advance and a special hi to Socks, Andy and Dad, Robin, as well, as a few others, who who are always there to help.
Re: Help with language evaluation,,,,,
Hey Tink- nice to hear from you!
This looks like a pretty exhaustive list to me… you should get some good information. Take care!
Robin
Re: Help with language evaluation,,,,,
Sounds like they are covering all their bases, oral motor exam is to see how strong his oral musculature is and how well it works together. The artic tests are for his articulation of speech sounds, the Kahn Lewis will further analyze his phonological processes. The speech and language sample will be analyzed for morphology, Mean Length of Utterance, which is how many words he strings together in an utterance. They are doing the TAPS-R and the TOPA to test for auditory and phonological processing. The TOLD is pretty standard for expressive and receptive language. The only other thing they could do would be a test for receptive vocabulary, perhaps a Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III could be used. I am not sure of the age limit for the Peabody though you would have to ask them.
Re: Help with language evaluation,,,,,
Thanks guys. Hee,hee I am sure covering their bases is just what they had in mind (o: That’s alright as long as he come out of all of it with what he needs. Don’t think they are doing receptive language Pattim as he seems to do very well in that area. Can’t wait to find out what all this tells us. Thanks!
They are doing a receptive language test because......
they are doing the TOLD and that tests both expressive and receptive language. When I do a diagnostic assessment I do the Peabody and the Expressive one word picture vocabulary test to find out about their vocabulary in more detail.
Re: They are doing a receptive language test because......
Patti you seem to know about lanuage test is the Language processing test a good test to give to a child on the autism spectrum? Should it be the only test used? My son is 9 1/2 and in third grade. When they did his language testing they gave him the language processing test. The only score they really discussed was his overall score of the 9th percentile. They did not break it down it to an expressive score and a receptive score. Was just curious. Thank you.
Re: They are doing a receptive language test because......
I have never given the Language Processing Test and I am not well versed in Autism. I know more about Dyslexia, CAPD and ADD and I am in grad school to be an SLP. I have found a list of what the LPT tests. It evaluates a child’s ablity to attach meaningto verbally presented language in an organized fashion starting from the basics of labeling a noun, being able to tell the function of an item, make associations with words, be able to categorize words, find similarities and differences and multiple meanings of words and lastly, attributes the last part of hierarchy. If he scores in the 9th percentile he is at least 1.5 standard deviations below the mean score of 50.
Where he is on the Autism spectrum would determine the types of tests or behavioral observations that are used in the assessment. I try to do as many tests as I can but with some children who are non-verbal who have autism we rely more on informal observations rather than normed assessments. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
Re: They are doing a receptive language test because......
Thanks for the information that is more then I had before. He is PDD-NOS has very mild symptoms mostly in the language area. His social skills are also affected for which he started a social skills group this year. Was just curious how they knew which areas to remediatte with only 1 test. Thanks again.
Hi-today we met with the teachers who recently tested our daughter-8yr old
she had the TAPS and Golman- I have to say they seemed right on the mark-we have been trying to get help for our child at first they said she had no problems..now after 2 years and a new school they finally tested her. We have found out she had an auditory processing disorder. Which has quite a bit to do with her speech with multisyllabic words, alike sounding words ex: lightening and lighting and working multi-task problems…but now there is hope-
good luck