Tests and critiques

http://buros.unl.edu/buros/jsp/search.jsp is an online database containing reviews of a number of tests relevant to developmental disorders of learning and literacy

Astronaut Invented Spelling Test (AIST), Roslyn Neilson, 2003, Language, Speech and Literacy Services, PO Box 72 , Jamberoo, NSW 2533. The AIST is a quick, simple, child-friendly test of invented spelling - which is itself a strong indicator of phonological awareness. Children are asked to ‘have a go' at spelling the names of a set of four humorous astronaut figures. Each first and last name contains one or two syllables, involving simple consonants, a range of vowels, and several consonants that are more difficult to segment. Phonetically reasonable attempts are scored as correct, with extra bonus points awarded for knowledge of common spelling patterns. The test kit includes photocopy masters. Note: The AIST was originally designed to allow local norms to be constructed for individual classes and cohorts, but a database of information on a range of populations is being accumulated by the author, and this normative data will be distributed to test purchasers at no extra cost during 2004.

Bangor Dyslexia Test (screener), problems using knowledge of tables as most children do not learn their tables now.

Boston Naming test, a confrontation naming test. From Psych Corp, $48

British Picture Vocabulary Scales - 2nd Edition Good because has norms up to 15 years.

Burt Word Reading Test has a long history and is a measure of single word recognition. The version we employ is based on a standardisation carried out in the early 1980s in New Zealand by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. While doubts may be expressed over the utility of reading single words in isolation, it remains a robust test especially when used as part of a battery of reading tests. Our experience with this test suggests that it now frequently overestimates reading age. This needs to be remembered when interpreting the results obtained with this test but it still provides a good reliable measure of relative reading gain over time. Note that the maximum reading age possible on the Burt is about 13 years.

Cambridge Contextual Reading Test, is a poor measure of reading ability and rather serves as a predictor of IQ, indeed it was developed as a measure of premorbid IQ.

Castles and Coltheart reading lists are good because they separate different types of reading, and they have some norms. They are good because they are free. They are not-so-good because the norms have been done by researchers and are published in journals, rather than the test being normed commercially. Also, they have no discontinue rule so a child has to suffer all items.

Children's Communication Checklist - 2nd Edition Good because it assess pragmatic language use, which few tests do. Completed by parents of children who have observed their child's use of language in a variety of contexts. This information is not available in a testing session. Norms for children who speak in sentences up to the age of 16.

Clay's Concepts about Print test.  For young children, assessing awareness of book technology, print conventions etc.  Biggish home environment effects, little heritability

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – 3 rd Ed ( CELF– III), Semel, E., Wiig,E.H. & Secord, W.A., 1995, The Psychological Corporation. CELF-4 Complete Kit $1,174.80 (incl. GST), Australian Adaptation Record forms (9-21yrs) (pack of 100) $627.00, Australian Adaptation Record forms (5-8yrs) (pack of 100) $627.00. This is a detailed oral language test, which identifies and diagnoses oral language difficulties in children, both in areas of language processing and expressive language. It is a measure used to give a global indication of children's language functioning. There are some concerns with some subtests which seem to be confounded by working memory requirements. The CELF-3 is being replaced with the CELF-4 (2003) with Australian Language Adaptation for clinical purposes and for research other than longitudinal studies in progress. The CELF-4 is said to have improved diagnostic power and uses a step approach to assessment moving from screening to identification of the nature of the disorder if this is required. The Recalling Sentences subtest from the 4th Edition is a sensitive marker of SLI and norms up to around 22 years.

Comprehensive test of phonological processing (CTOPP) Richard Wagner, Joseph Torgensen, and Carol Rashotte, 1999,Pro-Ed), Complete kit $677.The CTOPP assesses phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming. This test is used extensively in profiling the phonological processing of children with language and/or literacy difficulties. It has a lot of subtests for phonological awareness, rapid naming, digit span. An experimental but not-yet-published "pre-CTOPP," designed for preschool children has a lot of pictorial support.  Known (and pretty good) reliabilities, and information on the heritability of the subtests is being gathered. In preschool they are of the order of .20 - .48, probably higher in Kindergarten and beyond.  Also probably shows shared environment effects from school-age up. The Rapid Naming subtests are particularly useful, as well as the Phoneme Reversal Subtest, used for older students (e.g., above 8 yrs) to try to get at metalinguistic phoneme awareness. As the stimuli for this subtest are nonwords, it does stop students from using orthography to help them do the phonological processing to some extent. This subtest is also timed, so that if students have not developed automatised metalinguistic phoneme awareness this does seem to be reflected in the score – this does not seem to be the case for the Elision subtest in this battery, which many students may do orthographically a lot of the time.

Gathercole's nonword repetition test.  Published by Psychological Corporation, 30-52 Smidmore St , Marrickville, 2204, complete kit $310. Almost an industry standard, though a bit "lumpy" in its scoring (each item simply right or wrong, not phoneme-by-phoneme), and not all that reliable with very young kids (preschool age).

Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation. This test is good because it has norms for people up to around 22. It is not-so-good because we are finding children perform near ceiling.

Hundred Pictures Naming Test. This is a confrontation naming test, and it is good for young children. It shows big home environment effects, marginal heritability.   From ACER.

Leiter International Performance Scale – Revised (Leiter - R), Roid, G.H. & Miller, L.J., 1997, Stoelting. Three subtests yield a Memory Span Composite, and an Associative Memory composite is also available. This measures immediate and delayed memory for associations between visual stimuli. The Visualisation and Reasoning Battery is useful whenever it is suspected that performance on one of the Wechsler scales has been negatively affected by either receptive or expressive language difficulties. The Attention and Memory section of this battery is very useful in children with verbal short-term and working memory deficits, to check whether the memory deficits also extend across the visual domain. The test has subtests that separately examine visual short-term and working memory, and visual spatial memory. Students with very weak verbal memories may do much better in visual memory, especially in spatial memory - this has significant implications for intervention.

Manis et al.'s (1996) Orthographic choice task - it's not standardised and that's a weakness.

Martin and Pratt Nonword Reading Test (MPNRT), Martin, F. & Pratt, C., 2001, ACER Press. This is a simple to administer test of students' phonological recoding skill, one of the key skills involved in word reading. This test has the advantage over other nonword reading tests of having difficulty levels established on Australian students. Regular word structures are used for nonword items to enable the student to employ phonological recoding strategies to produce the combined sound of letter strings. Phonological recoding is the ability to match a sequence of letters to its corresponding sounds (decoding) and is indicative of a student's ability to read novel or unfamiliar words in text. Students who are poor decoders are more likely to rely on contextual information when they read. The use of non-words in a test such as this allows for the detection of those students who are largely relying on compensatory strategies rather than generative decoding strategies when attempting to read. The test consists of pseudowords, which range from simple three letter non-words to more difficult multisyllabic non-words. This test assesses performance between the ages of 6 to 16 years. It is a g ood test of phonological coding that has norms and has discontinue rules.

McBride-Chang's (1995) tests of phonological awareness (position analysis, phoneme deletion) - not standardised and that's a weakness.

National Adult Reading Test (NART), is a poor measure of reading ability and rather serves as a predictor of IQ, indeed it was developed as a measure of premorbid IQ.

Neale Analysis of Reading , 3 rd Edition (NEALE-3), This is a standardised reading test, administered individually, that provides measures of text reading rate, accuracy and comprehension. The child is asked to read aloud a series of short passages and then answer a set of open-ended questions after each one. Given that the Neale Analysis is based on a recent standardisation carried out with Australian students (the third edition was published in 1999), that the accuracy and reliability of the Australian version has been independently confirmed, and its continued widespread use (particularly in the UK and Australia), it is probably the best available measure of reading accuracy and, arguably, of reading comprehension, for Australian students. The Neale Analysis measures, and provides reading age estimates for, both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Note that the maximum reading age possible on the Neale is about 13 years. The Neale is good because it gives measures of reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension and it has parallel passages that can be used to assess listening comprehension. This test is one that teachers and parents are familiar with and understand. The comprehension measure however has several confounds: the child is assisted with words that he/she cannot decode so to some extent listening comprehension is being assessed as well as reading comprehension; the child is asked to answer questions without looking back over the text, so it places a load on working memory. In addition older children are often uncomfortable/unfamiliar with reading aloud.

NEPSY A developmental neuropsychological assessment. Korkman, M., Kirk, U., & Kemp. S. (1998). San Antonio , TX.: The Psychological Corporation. Repetition of Nonwords subtest is good because non-word repetition is a sensitive marker of SLI . The Narrative Memory Subtest is used to explore children's long-term verbal memory. Spontaneous and cued recall are separately examined. The Verbal Fluency Subtest is basically the adult FAS test but has norms for children. It is useful for contrasting fluency with meaning related and phonologically related information. Norms extend only to 12 years 11 months.

Orthographic choice, a modified version of Olson's well-known test for word-specific knowledge. Simple and pretty quick to give.

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III), Dunn, L.M.& Dunn, L.M. with Williams, K.T., 1997, American Guidance Service. This is a measure of receptive vocabulary and estimate of verbal ability/scholastic aptitude, expressed as a standardised score and as a percentile rank. It may not be helpful in identifying children with language impairment as single word receptive vocabulary is often relatively sound in children with a variety of other language difficulties. However it is possible to explore, for example, whether a child's reading comprehension problem may be the result of difficulties with listening comprehension. The test is easy to use, is widely known and has good norms.

Phonological Assessment Battery (PhAB) Frederickson, N., Frith, U. & Reason, R., 1997, NFER-Nelson, This is an alternative test of phonological processing. The Alliteration Test with Pictures subtest is good because it provides pictures to support the child, so there not such a heavy load on memory. Norms are available up to 15 years.

Queensland Inventory of Literacy (QUIL), Barbara Dodd, Alison Holm, Michael Oerlemans & Marian McCormick, 1996, Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology, The University of Queensland. This is a test of phonological awareness skills as they pertain to literacy development. The test provides Australian norms for children in Years 1-7, however, the tests needs bigger sample for norms, as the grading is rather coarse at the moment. The Nonword Spelling Subtest is useful for assessing older primary children whose spelling and written development appear to be a very specific difficulty. Norms only extend to Yr 7 but High School children with these difficulties often rank very low and the qualitative information is invaluable. It looks useful for research in raw score form, and shows good discrimination over 24 items. This subtest is thought to show when children are (1) not correctly conducting the initial speech sound analysis required by spelling, and (2) cannot write down what they “hear” in the correct English sound/spelling code. Real word spelling (e.g., South Australian Spelling Test) does not seem to us to reliably give this information. The Spoonerisms subtest is probably the most useful as it gets at metalinguistic phoneme awareness. Even so, we find that students who are weak phonologically if given time can be accurate on these stimuli because they do the task orthographically as the words as mostly very simple. Hence, latency is a better indication of phonological weakness than absolute score.

Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM) - it's easy and quick to use and you can create a 'board' form (similar to a jigsaw puzzle) to use with children with intellectual disability to explain what's required.

South Australian Spelling Test (SAST), printed in Peter Westwood, 1999, Spelling: Approaches to teaching and assessment. ACER Press. This is a test of real word spelling which has been standardised across the age range 6-15 years. The revised norms for this simple spelling test provide estimates of spelling age based on a sample of South Australian students tested in 1993. This test assesses spelling performance from age 6 to over 15 years. It is popular because it has Australian norms however in some places it may be over-used and some children are developing familiarity with the test.

South Tyneside Assessment of Phonology (STAP) - especially for children with speech output problems (e.g., with Down syndrome).

Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test–Revised (SPAT-R), Roslyn Neilson, 2003, Language, Speech and Literacy Services, PO Box 72 , Jamberoo, NSW 2533. The SPAT-R is a simple yet thorough standardised test that provides a diagnostic overview of the phonological awareness skills required for early literacy development. The test targets sounds at the level of syllables, onset/rime, and phonemes, including blends or clusters. Tasks involve identification, blending, segmenting, and phoneme deletion. Photocopy masters for the test booklets may be purchased. Teachers find this test user-friendly and that student profiles can easily be related to intervention programs. However, we the norms supplied with the test may not be applicable for WA Pre-Primary children, possibly because of the different programmes in the different states. Year 1 data seem to be much more convergent.

Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language - Revised (TACL-R), - goes above the level of single words.

Test of word knowledge, Good because has norms. Bad because norms only up to 11 1/2 y.o.

Test of Written Spelling (TWS). A strength is its inclusion of words with predictable and unpredictable spellings.

Test of word reading efficiency (TOWRE), from ProEd, Oz agent ProEd, PO Box 3161, Nerang East Qld 4211, Cost:Complete Kit $360.80, Form A record booklets (pack of 25) $72.60, Form B record booklets (pack of 25) $72.60. This timed test quickly and accurately measures word recognition fluency by asking children to read as many words as possible in 45 seconds, placing an emphasis on sight word reading . The second subtest requires the child to read a list of nonwords under the same conditions, measuring phonemic decoding fluency. Results are presented as standard scores with a mean of 100 (range 85-115) and can be converted to percentile scores. Although this test strongly resembles the Word Identification and Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock, as mentioned above, the timed aspect of this test is particularly valuable in identifying those children who have learned to decode accurately but have not achieved automaticity in their reading. The test is quick to give, spans early childhood to adulthood, is highly reliable, correlates highly with other industry standards such as Woodcock, and has known (and high) heritability.

Test for the reception of grammar (TROG).  Dorothy Bishop's test, just released in new improved 3rd version.  Tests a wide variety of grammatical forms, with vocabulary precheck.  Test for Reception of Grammar - 2nd Edition Good because has norms for children and adults and norms suit Australian children. Our supplier has closed, need to contact Dorothy at Oxford for local supplier.

Visual Patterns Test - Thames Valley Test Company - A nice, simple test of short term visual memory.

Wechsler Individual Achievement Test – 2nd Edition (WIAT-II). The Psychological Corporation. The Spelling Subtest can be used as an alternative to the SAST, but it is not yet clear how well the norms work for Australian children. It has potential use because the battery presents norms for prediction of achievement from general ability as measured by the WISC-III. This can be useful in demonstrating the specific nature of a student's literacy problems. The reading word reading subtest has the same possibilities.

Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children - 4th Edition. (WISC-IV). Subtests include Matrix Reasoning. This test is good because has norms for children up to 17 years, but norms for MR subtest are questionable for Australian kids (this is currently being tested).

Wheldall Assessment of Reading Passages (WARP). is a relatively new curriculum-based measure of reading. The experimental edition of the WARP consists of a series of 200 word passages, each passage comprising an entire story, specially written so that there could be no danger of students having encountered the passages before and thereby eliminating the possibility of a practice effect. The WARP has repeatedly been shown to be both highly reliable and valid. Three WARP passages are typically administered as part of a MULTILIT assessment. The number of words read correctly per minute is averaged over the three passages to yield a single measure of the number of words read correctly in one minute. The WARP is used to measure oral reading fluency . Reading fluency refers to how rapidly a child can read words correctly. In essence, we are interested in how many words per minute a child can read accurately. To be a competent reader, one needs to be able to read at a reasonable speed in order to process the voluminous amount of text that high school presents, for example. There is another important reason, however. If a child takes an inordinately long time to read the individual words in a sentence, it is quite possible that s/he may have forgotten what the beginning of the sentence was about by the time s/he reaches the end of the sentence. This will be more evident in the case of a succession of sentences within a paragraph. Obviously, this will hinder reading comprehension. Consequently, the aim is not just to teach children to be able to read words accurately, but to do so at a good rate.

Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) Psych Corp. Spelling Subtest is well used standard, though lacking in well thought-out items for particular spelling patterns.

Wide range assessment of memory and learning (WRAML). Psychological Corp, complete kit $1209. Standardised test of learning processes, across about 8 domains.  Our subtests moderately heritable (.25 - .37), reliabilities with older kids probably OK.

Woodcock Reading Mastery test.  (Richard, W. Woodcock, 1998, American Guidance Service). This test has a wide age range from young children to older adults. From ACER, $650, $109 for 25 booklets. Very commonly used, this test gives standardised scores for reading real and nonwords, but real words are a mix of regular and irregular words and that's a weakness. Subtests include Word Identification, Word Attack, Passage Comprehension and Visual Auditory Learning. Word Identification uses a graded word list which allows us to observe the child's word real word recognition in single word reading where context and meaning cues are not available. We find it useful to compare scores on this subtest with those on the TOWRE speeded reading of real words. Word Attack requires the student to read graded nonsense words. This test purports to measure a child's use of letter-sound correspondences i.e., phonological decoding, however, there are concerns that for at least the first half of the items (one and two syllable nonwords) students do these partly by visual analogy to real words. Thus, children in lower grades may look as if they can decode when actually we think they may be using primarily visual skills. Also, children can score quite well in accuracy, but still have very poorly automatised phonological decoding. So, for these reasons, this subtest is best used in combination with a measure of speeded nonword reading e.g., TOWRE . Passage Comprehension is a graded series of sentences/paragraphs presented as cloze exercises. The student is told to read the items silently. This seems to get at how much meaning students are able to extract unaided from what they have read. Visual Auditory Learning is meant to tap ability to form associations between visual stimuli and oral responses. We also find it a useful qualitative indicator of verbal working memory problems.