A Comparison of Parent Interview and Direct Assessment of Receptive Language in Preschool-aged Children with Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy is a multiply handicapping condition which may affect motor skills, hearing, sight, speech and cognitive functioning. Assessment instruments which do not rely on an intact sensory and motor system are needed for use with the population with cerebral palsy in order to obtain valid information regarding levels of functioning. The information obtained from the results of modified assessment instruments can be used to plan and implement intervention at the child\u27s current level of functioning. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether or not parent interview/report is a reliable means of assessing receptive communication skills in preschool-aged children with cerebral palsy. Additionally, the relationship between motor skills and receptive language skills in terms of severity of motor impairment was examined. The subject pool was comprised of fifteen children, 10 males and 5 females, between the ages of three to six years who were participating in a longitudinal study at Portland State University. Each subject and his/her mother participated in a two and a half hour in-home assessment session. A physical therapy student accompanied this examiner to the subject\u27s homes in order to address positioning needs before the direct measure was administered. Both the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale - Interview Format and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised were administered to each participating subject. A Spearman correlation coefficient was performed in order to examine the strength of the relationship between parent report/interview and direct assessment. A significance value of .05 was used. Results revealed that parent report is a valid means for assessing receptive communication skills in the preschool-aged population with cerebral palsy. Two one-way measures of analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed in order to examine whether or not a significant difference existed, among the categories of motor impairment in terms of receptive communication and receptive vocabulary scores. Significant differences were not found for the development of receptive language skills between the categories of motor impairment in this sample. However, further research using a larger sample size may identify significant differences between the moderate and severe groups in terms of scores obtained on the PPVT and the VABS receptive subscale