I was in the library the other day going through some recent journals when I found the latest issue of Seminars in Speech & Language. What great timing! Volume 22, No. 1, 2001 is edited by Aquiles Iglesias and has some excellent papers by a few of the presenters for the Institute in Cancun. We only have a month before Cancun and what a great way to prepare for the Institute. Read these articles to get yourself up to date in cognition, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and narratives. The following is a brief summary of the articles. Hope to see you in Cancun! HK
Aquiles Iglesias, "What Test Should I Use?"
Dr. Iglesias sets the stage for the other papers by describing the Hispanic/Latino population. He emphasizes that to complete any assessment this background knowledge is important for clinicians to have to base any decisions and to provide the best quality of diagnostic services. He describes the Hispanic demographics for the U.S. and then the population needs. He briefly discusses the issues involving language development, second language acquisition, language loss, and dialects. He discusses the importance of the child's experiences and socialization. Issues related to assessment are discussed including the biasing affect of observations of naturalistic environments. The goal is to provide assessment protocols that consider the child's social and linguistic environment
Samuel Ortiz, "Assessment of Cognitive Abilities in Hispanic Children"
Dr. Ortiz provides an excellent literature review on intelligence testing in minority populations and then argues that tests should be classified by degree of cultural loading and linguistic demand. He provides a table that classifies a number of instruments and then rates these by verbal versus nonverbal language requirements on the part of the examiner, receptive language requirements on the part of the examinee, and expressive language requirements on the part of the examinee. The system is organized according to high, moderate, and low. This allows the evaluator to better select tests that reduces bias and helps with a basis for interpretation. He recommends that in general tests with lowest cultural loadings and lowest linguistic demands should be selected over tests that are classified higher. This is an excellent resource for SLP's to share with their educational psychologist.
Brian Goldstein, "Assessing Phonological Skills in Hispanic/Latino Children"
Dr. Goldstein provides procedures for completing a thorough phonological assessment for Hispanic/Latino children. He covers choice of assessment tools, phonological analyses, and consideration of dialect in the assessment.
Elizabeth Pena, "Assessment of Semantic Knowledge: Use of Feedback and Clinical Interviewing"
Dr. Pena discusses the importance of assessing the semantic knowledge of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Single-word vocabulary tests are known not to provide accurate profiles for children from diverse backgrounds. Clinicians should have some information concerning children's semantic knowledge. She describes the use of two procedures, feedback and the clinical interview as procedures that may be used to probe children's language abilities.
Lisa Bedore, "Assessing Morphosyntax in Spanish-Speaking Children"
Dr. Bedore describes the nature and acquisition of the Spanish morphosyntactic system and those areas that are likely to be difficult for children with language impairments. The analysis of spontaneous language samples and structured probes are discussed as alternatives for assessment. She also discusses the importance of naturalness and linguistic demands of assessment tasks and their relationships to children's performance on tasks.
Vera Gutierrez-Clellen & Lisa DeCurtis, "Examining the Quality of Children's Stories: Clinical Applications"
Dr. Gutierrez-Clellen and Ms. DeCurtis review child narratives studies to show crosslinguistic similarities and differences across Spanish and English speakers. They describe an approach to examine the quality of children's narratives produced by Spanish-speaking children. The protocol focuses on plot, clarity, cohesion, specificity, and memorable features of narratives as assessment categories.
