A Comparison of Groups\u27 Judgments during the Screening of Normally-Developing and Language-Impaired Children

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether classroom teachers, student clinicians, and public school speech- language pathologists judge child language performance differently when using personal criteria and when using selected criteria to screen child language performance. The subjects in the present study were ten public school speech- language pathologists with one to thirteen years of experience, ten student clinicians with one to three semesters of supervised clinical practicum, and ten classroom teachers with one to six years of experience. Two videotapes of one-minute start/stop language samples of ten children, five of whom were language normal and five of whom were language impaired, were shown to the three subject groups under controlled conditions. The subjects judged the language performance of the ten children using personal criteria and selected criteria. The subject groups were 79 percent correct in their judgments of the performance of language-impaired children. The subject groups were 94 percent correct in their judgments of the language performance of children without language impairment. Statistical analyses of the judgments of the subject groups revealed significant differences among the subject groups\u27 judgments of the language performance of the five language-normal children. It was concluded from the present study that classroom teachers use Sound Production Criteria as an important element in their judgment of child language performance. The subject groups did not accurately identify the presence of language impairment in children and did not agree on the severity of the identified language impairment. The three subject groups did identify the normal language performance accurately and did agree on the ratings of normalcy