Test Reviews

I teach psychometrics and measurement– now at the Ph.D. level at UCI. Previously at the MA level at UT. And I’ve often talked about how to select tests for diagnostic decision making. We want to select measures that do the job! For making a decision about whether someone has an impairment or not, we need to use procedures that have good sensitivity and specificity. Validity and reliability is good, but not enough.

I used to have an assignment in my class for MA students where they had to select a set of measures for a fictional speech and language clinic, given a budget. They had to review and justify their purchases, covering the target age range, possible needs and disorder categories. Importantly, they needed to select measures that did the job. I figured they would leave with a good list of possible measures that work (easy b/c MOST DON’T!!). From time to time, someone will ask me for the list of tests and I hunt it down and send it out. I finally decided to make it easy on myself and to make the list into a viewable google sheet. The bolded measures are those that report sensitiity and specificity of at least 80%. These are the ones that do the job. I also know that there are newer and updated measures, and new information on old measures. If you want to help update the list, here’s a form you can complete. It will automatically update in the google sheet under the new measures tab.

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We Can’t WAIT!

There’s been a lot of discussion concerning COVID19 and schooling from home. In the special education domain, at least in speech-language pathology, we seem to be all over the place. Not that it’s easy it’s not. But, I hear a lot of comments and reports that school districts are suspending special education testing:

• till schools open again
• because standardized tests aren’t standardized for on-line administration
• because we’re not comfortable
• because we think that it can’t be valid

Why Opinion and Personal Observation isn’t as good as Systematic Research

Families of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are often told to use only one language. School district personnel may insist that these children receive instruction in only one language even if there are bilingual programs available. Even bilingual personnel who work with children (teachers and SLPs for example) may say that children with DLD can become more confused if in a bilingual environment. This is simply not true. I have participated in many studies that demonstrate that bilingual children are not more likely to show higher risk for DLD than monolinguals; we know that bilingual children with DLD show comparable performance to monolingual children with DLD; we know that bilingual children with DLD show cognate advantages similar to typical bilinguals; we know that intervention in one language can carry over to the other language. This work is all supported by the data-based research (linked) and is consistent with work that other researchers are doing.

Does bilingualism hurt children with DLD?

You know I’m gonna say no. But, it’s important to establish what does happen and to do so with data. After several studies we have enough data to look at this question more carefully with a set of children with developmental language disorder (aka: language impairment; specific language impairment; or primary language impairment) who had varying levels of exposure to Spanish and English.

Bilinguals and their Houses

At Lourdes Martinez Nieto’s dissertation defense, she was asked about how she would respond to someone concluding that bilingualism is “bad” for kids’ language development because they may have a smaller vocabulary in one of their languages compared to a monolingual in that language. She gave a great analogy about language being like a house. Over lunch celebrating her fantastic presentation and successful defense, we (Lourdes, Beatriz Barragan, Laida Restrepo, and I) added to the analogy and wanted to share it here.

Let’s imagine language is like a house. And vocabulary is like furniture. So, you go to visit the monolingual at her house. She has just one room in her house, but that one room is very well-furnished. There are plenty of sofas and armchairs and tables and lamps (i.e. a nice big vocabulary). Now, when you go visit the bilingual at her house, she has the same square footage but her house is divided into two rooms with fewer pieces of furniture in each room. She had to take her sofas and chairs and tables and lamps and divide them between the two rooms so she could have two comfortable living spaces. (Make sure you think of the two rooms as being connected by a big, open hallway because we don’t want to suggest that there isn’t an easy flow of information between the two languages in a bilingual brain).

Now, let’s apply this same analogy to language assessment. One way you could measure the house is how well each room is furnished. It’s somewhat arbitrary to use just that one measure (i.e. vocabulary size) to decide on the quality of one’s house (i.e. language ability), but it could be done. If you used just that measure, the monolingual has a better house because her single room has more furniture. But by doing that, you completely ignore that the bilingual has two different rooms where she can comfortably entertain guests and has more flexibility about which room she uses for different activities. A bilingual can communicate with more people!

As SLPs and language researchers, let’s remember that there are other ways to measure houses than looking at just the furniture in a single room. Using monolingual vocabulary size as the gold standard and then claiming that any child who doesn’t meet that standard is somehow behind or less able just doesn’t make sense. Let’s not forget to take into account how many rooms are in the house.

If you have an idea about how to add to the analogy, comment below!

Thanks!

Ashley Adams, PhD, CCC-SLP

So you want to get a Ph.D.

Some thoughts about getting a Ph.D.

HABLA Lab

It’s that time of year when students are making decisions about where they are going to go for graduate school and others are thinking of applying to graduate programs in the next round this coming fall. In CSD there is a severe shortage of new Ph.D.s to take on faculty positions. So for me it’s important to recruit and train future CSD faculty. I’ve worked with a number of students who have completed the degree and have gone on to successful careers as faculty and leaders in the profession. As you may know I’m now at the University of California, Irvine and Lisa Bedore is moving to Temple University. We both remain committed to helping to train the next generation of Ph.D.s in the field. Below, I give some of my thoughts about the Ph.D. and finding a program that is right for you and your interests.

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Translanguaging

Recently, I participated in a roundtable discussion through TCU on the topic of dynamic assessment and translanguaging. My topic was dynamic assessment. But, I was really struck by the notion of  translanguaging. 

It was an interesting discussion about how to provide support to children in both languages and allow them to have access to both of their languages to maximize opportunities for language interaction. You might want to read more about translanguaging using the link above and also here. I think that translanguaging is a powerful way to support linguistic development and access in bilingual youth.

 

Do bilinguals have to be tested in both languages? Part 2

The answers are yes, no, maybe, it depends. Last time we talked about “yes.” This time let’s talk about:

• no

Do bilinguals have to be tested in both languages?

Yes, no, maybe, it depends. 

Changes

Well, there’s been a number of changes in my life professionally, I don’t really know where to begin. But, I guess I’ll tell you about a couple of things.