Assessing the comprehension and production of language in young children: an account of the Reynell Developmental Language Scales III

Abstract

The Reynell Developmental Language Scales III have been designed to test the language abilities of children from 18 months to 7 years. They have been standardized on a large, representative sample of children in the United Kingdom and thereby provide a robust measure of language achievement. These Scales provide clinicians with the means of comparing the performance of children who have been referred for therapy, or who are in therapy, with the performance of a large group of normally developing children. The Scales reflect the developmental progression of normal child language in the early years, focusing on key features of child language acquisition at different stages as well as on features which are known to distinguish language impaired-children from language-normal children. While not claiming that the tests are fully comprehensive, the authors maintain that they afford the clinician with a means of looking at components of language while also gaining some insights into the child's ability to integrate vocabulary and grammar. It is recognized that no test can fully assess every aspect of language; essentially a test must be practical in terms of design and, for screening purposes, sufficiently comprehensive to be used with a large section of children referred. In addition to fulfilling these criteria, the Scales have been designed to provide some diagnostic indicators of areas of difficulty. The aims of the original Scales were to provide a measure of verbal ability that could be compared with mental age, and to provide separate scores for production and comprehension. These aims have also been realized in the new version. Additionally a test has been provided that is consonant with information gained from the intensive research in the field of child language that has taken place since the original Scales were devised. The Scales can reveal information about a child's language abilities not readily available from observation and serve a useful function in both identifying disorder and evaluating therapy. Clinicians are increasingly being asked to demonstrate effectiveness of therapy but are hampered by inappropriate outcome measures (Law 1997). It is hoped that the RDLS III provides a test that is valid and reliable and one that can contribute to both the characterization of speech and language disorders and the measurement of treatment efficacy.

A randomised controlled trial to test the effect of promoting caregiver contingent talk on language development in infants from diverse socioeconomic status backgrounds

“…When the infants were 18 and 24 months old, a researcher blind to intervention allocation repeated naturalistic recordings (video and LENA) following the procedure at baseline to obtain postintervention measures of infant vocalisations and word production. Two standardised tests were also administered at 24 months: the Reynell Comprehension Scale (Edwards, Garman, Hughes, Letts, & Sinka, ) and the Early Repetition Battery (Seeff‐Gabriel, Chiat, & Roy, ).…”

The association between the COMT gene Val158Met polymorphism and preschoolers’ autobiographical memory details and narrative cohesiveness

“…RT-PCR reaction components and final concentrations were as follows: 1:5 5 × HOT FIREPol Probe qPCR Mix Plus (ROX) (SolisBiodyne) and 1:20 80 × TaqMan Primers Probe (F 5 -CCCAGCGGATGGTGGAT-3 ; R 5 -CAGGCATGCACACCTTGTC-3 ; Reporter 1-TTCGCTGGCATGAAG (VIC); Reporter 2-TCGCTGGCGTGAAG (FAM)). Reactions were performed on the ABI 7500 Real-Time PCR system and the amplification procedure consisted of an initial denaturation step at 95 • C for 15 min and 40 cycles of (Edwards, Garman, Hughes, Letts, & Sinka, 1999) was administered. The Comprehension Scale of the test ends with questions about a picture depicting people in a burger bar celebrating a birthday.…”

Gender differences in the content of preschool children’s recollections

“…Children were interviewed in the kindergarten individually in a separate room by a female research assistant. First, the Comprehension Scale from the Reynell test (Edwards, Garman, Hughes, Letts, & Sinka, 1999) was administered. The Comprehension Scale of the test ends with several questions about a picture depicting a girl's birthday party in a burger bar.…”