Comparing Language Skills Measured by the CASL Narrative Assessment Rebecca M Throneburg Ph D CCC SLP Eastern Illinois University email rmthroneburg eiu edu phone 217 581 7447 Lynn K Calvert M A CCC SLP Eastern Illinois University email lcalvert eiu edu phone 217 581 7452 Assessment Measures Purpose Purpose Results Means from subtests of the CASL with normal developing children and children with language impairments Means from narrative tasks with normal developing children and children with language impairments Normal Normal Lang Imp Lang Imp 200 140 p 01 120 p 01 p 01 p 01 p 01 p 01 p 01 180 160 100 140 80 120 60 100 40 80 p 01 60 20 40 p 05 0 p m Correlations of Form Measures from CASL top row with Narrative Measures 1st column Syntax Const Gram Morphemes Gram Judgment Words per c unit 289 144 379 Conjunctions Used 118 253 Gram Accuracy 649 623 214 640 P 05 Ac c al W or d To t G ra m or d Vo ca b W D iff ni qu e U Ra t in g cun it or y St on s ct i W or ds Co m p Q ue st i Pa on s r Co ny to An 0 Co nj un s m dg p m Co ra G nt ax nt Ju m ns Co M m Sy Se s or 20 m Subjects Across numerous studies it was found that compared to their normal peers narratives of All subjects had normal cognitive ability children with language disorders contain Normal Developing Language Impaired fewer story grammar components Klecan Aker Kelty 1990 Merritt Liles 1987 N 11 N 11 fewer different words Strong Shaver 1991 Newcomer Barenbaum Nodine 1 first grader 1 first grader 1988 7 second graders fewer attempts plans and internal responses Roth Speckman 1986 Griffith Ripich 7 second graders Dastoli 1986 3 third graders 3 third graders too much or too little information Candler Hildreth 1990 Criteria for normal Criteria for children less conventionalized story introductions conclusions Sleight Prinz 1985 developing subjects with language less complete cohesive ties Liles 1985 was average or above impairments required average performance them to score 1 5 or more lexical ties demonstrative references and error ties Liles 1985 on classroom work per greater standard less awareness of listener knowledge Liles 1987 teacher judgment deviations below the and more unsuccessful repairs to accurate story meaning Purcell Liles 1992 mean on two No history of speech Conflicting findings were also noted standardized measures or language delays Some studies have found that children with language disorders produced shorter stories at the time they were No current or past S L as measured by number of propositions or utterances Liles 1985 Roth Spekman assessed and added to treatment 1986 while others have reported similar story length between groups Feagans SLPs caseload as well Short 1984 as teacher referral and Some studies have shown similar numbers of total words German Simon 1991 in SLPs judgment stories while other demonstrated shorter stories by language impaired children Klee None of the children 1992 Strong Shaver 1991 were initially diagnosed using the Gillam 2003 Summarized Least to Most Discriminating Narrative CASL Standardized Measures Including tests for diagnosis included TOLD LPT Type story grammar propositions CELF etc Number of story grammar propositions Total number of words or utterances Grammatical complexity Subtests from the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language CASL Carrow Woolfolk 1999 including Number of different words Antonyms Synonyms Sentence Completion Syntax Holistic scoring Construction Paragraph Comprehension Grammatical Grammatical acceptability Morphemes and Grammaticality Judgment were administered to children individually Story retelling tasks and comprehension questions from the In comparison to their peers children with language disorders produce narratives Strong Narrative Assessment Procedure SNAP Strong which are less complex with deficits in sentence grammar story grammar and 1998 were performed Two of the four wordless Mercer Mayer storybooks from the cohesion Gillam 1989 Gillam Johnson 1992 Graybeal 1981 Liles 1985 1987 SNAP were used After listening to the story subjects moved Merritt Liles 1987 to a different room where they had to retell the story to a na ve listener from memory without the use of pictures Both were administered scored and transcribed by two Narratives as an Assessment or Screening Tool Communication Disorders Sciences students Culatta Page Ellis 1983 evaluated the effectiveness of using narratives as a Subjects were tested individually in a small quiet room Pearson correlations were calculated between the CASL and screening tool to identify language disorders narrative task measures T tests to evaluate significant Found only low to moderate correlations between narrative measures and differences between groups were also performed standardized language screening tool results Thought narrative assessment may be a sensitive tool found some children 7 CASL subtests who performed well on standardized tool but poorly on narrative tasks 4 Narrative measures used from the SNAP included included Strong 1998 has published the Strong Narrative Assessment Procedure one Comprehension Questions of the first story telling assessments to contain some normative information Story retelling rating of story structure episodes and The tool lacks information about criterion validity as to how well it s scores coherence Fox Wright 1997 Koskinen Gambrell correlate with other traditional standardized language assessments Kapinus 1993 It is difficult to discern how sensitive the story telling tasks are for identifying Words per c unit children with language impairment Total number of words 4 Other narrative measures included Total number of different words Although SLPs have many assessment options available more information is Average number of cohesive conjunctions used needed about the relationship among measures so that valid time efficient evaluations Unique vocabulary not in the 500 most common words can be conducted The purpose of the present study was to compare language results from narrative assessment with a new comprehensive standardized test the in a 6 year olds expressive vocabulary Wepman Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language CASL Hass 1969 Grammatical accuracy ra Crais Lorch 1994 Summarized Discriminating Narrative Measures ny Past Research G Poster 39 no Session 624 Miranda R Glover B S Eastern Illinois University email m glover13 hotmail com phone 217 512 9527 Lindsay Moffett B S Eastern Illinois University email Lindsmoff aol com phone 217 855