Language: Dynamic Assessment

If performance increases with nonverbal cues (gesture)

8-12 mo strategies

9-18 months - illocutionary

Assess transition to intentionality

2 - emerging language stage- look for

Child as agent Informal - use of objects x intended use: comb, telephone, pretend to eat with spoon Fx'l communication - requests, attempts, greeting/showing Communication temptations - wind up a toy and let it wind down, eat a cookie in front of child

18-36 months risks

Cog deficit, hl, social/preverbal comm probl's, dysfx family, birth hx, family hx, lo SES, lo maternal ed

Dynamic Assessment

Determine ability of child to learn new task in structured teaching environment; assist in differentiating a child who has not had opportunity to learn language skills from one who has language learning difficulty/disorder; use test-teach-retest procedure to determine potential to learn

Test-teach-retest

Identify deficient or emerging skills by teaching principles of the task then post-test to find out how modifiable child's performance is.

Graduated prompting

Identify zpd by providing hierarchy of prompts to vary level of contextual support, ie. number of prompts needed to elicit targets. The fewer cues for word production predicts readiness for multi-word speech.

Test-teach-retest example

If a child does poorly on a language test, provide instruction on items similar to those on the test by giving verbal explanations, modeling and prompts.

Goals

In choosing goals for intervention, it's important to consider the priorities of the child's family/teachers and communication barriers to social and academic success, but understanding the TD sequence of language skills is essential to making decisions about which goals to target

MLE - mediated learning experience

Likert scales used to rate the child at the beginning and end of intervention phase of DA. Document change in behavior pretest to posttest. Helps distinguish language difference from disorder.

Dynamic Assessment

Manipulate context to increase support and increase level of achievement approach used to help determine language difference vs. language disorder allows clinician to learn, for children who do not improve quantitatively on testing, whether their performance improved qualitatively - to show potential for learning How modifiable a child's behavior is in response to intervention and what is the best intervention style (CC, CD, hybrid) Observe child's learning process - how a child approaches tasks and self-monitors

Example of expressive communication goal (will use gestures to request item)

When desired activities or objects are offered to him, Joey will request them from his partner by using directed gestures, vocalizations, and/or eye contact in 90% of opportunities across 3 consecutive 10-minute periods, across two environments with 3 different people.

Example of receptive communication goal (turns and looks to name while playing)

When teacher calls his name while Joey is playing, Joey will turn and look up and make eye contact in 90% of opportunities across 3 consecutive 10-minute periods, across two environments with 3 different people.

If 5 nouns and 3 vbs, then test 18-24 months (child as agent)

action-object: unexpected combinations "kiss the apple" - child bites the apple "hug the shoe" - child puts on shoe child is using "do what you usually do" strategy

If comprehends 2-term relationships, test 24-36 month level

agent-action-object (3 terms) ex."make the horse eat the cow" - child bites cow (=child as agent)

2-3 - developing language stage

agent-object-object x probable event strategy

MLE scoring

amount of support provided 1 2 3 child responsiveness to task 1 2 3

18-36 months language risks

lo vocab/vbs, general vbs (go, make, get, do) 6 month delay cognition phonology: lim'd babbling/c's, v errors lo initiation

Graduated prompting examples

modeling - "it's a baby" modeling with elicitation - "it's a baby, what is it?" modeling with obstacle - withhold doll until child says word

18-36 months nonverbal risk s

play - manipulate and group obj's Lo symbolic gesture - less communicative Social - difficult interaction/behavior