Hebrew language assessment measure for preschool children: A comparison between typically developing children and children with specific language impairment

Abstract

The Katzenberger Hebrew Language Assessment for Preschool Children (henceforth: the KHLA) is the first comprehensive, standardized language assessment tool developed in Hebrew specifically for older preschoolers (4;0–5;11 years). The KHLA is a norm-referenced, Hebrew specific assessment, based on well-established psycholinguistic principles, as well as on the established knowledge in the field of normal language development in the preschool years. The main goal of the study is to evaluate the KHLA as a tool for identification of language-impaired Hebrew-speaking preschoolers and to find out whether the test distinguishes between typically developing (TDL) and language-impaired children. The aim of the application of the KHLA is to characterize the language skills of Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). The tasks comprised in the assessment are considered in the literature to be the sensitive areas of language skills appropriate for assessing children with SLI. Participants included 454 (383 TDL and 71 SLI) mid–high SES, monolingual native speakers of Hebrew, aged 4;0–5;11 years. The assessment included six subtests (with a total of 171 items): Auditory Processing, Lexicon, Grammar, Phonological Awareness, Semantic Categorization, and Narration of Picture Series. The study focuses on the psychometric aspect of the test. The KHLA was found useful for distinguishing between TDL and SLI when the identification is based on the total Z-score or at least two of the subtest-specific Z-scores in −1.25 SD cutoff points. The results provide a ranking order for assessment: Grammar, Auditory Processing, Semantic Categorization, Narration of Picture Series/Lexicon, and Phonological Awareness. The main clinical implications of this study are to consider the optimal cutoff point of −1.25 SD for diagnosis of SLI children and to apply the entire test for assessment. In cases when the clinician may decide to assess only two or three subtests, it is recommended that the ranking order be applied as described in the study.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches and Methods in Language “Testing and Assessment” Research: A Literature Review

“…In quantitative language testing research, it is found that the studies just investigate and estimate the language skills, proficiency, scoring, and so on. A study undertaken by Katzenberger and Meilijson (2014) on the assessment of Hebrew language for preschool children in which it is to find out the language-impaired Hebrew-speaking pre-school children and to identify whether the test can distinguish the developing and language-impaired children. However, the study did not explore why some children develop their language learning and why some are impaired.…”

Emergent literacy skills for five kindergartners with autism spectrum disorder: a pilot study

“…The Narration of Picture Series Scale of the Katzenberger Hebrew Language Assessment (KHLA; Katzenberger, ; Katzenberger and Meilijson, ) was used to assess text comprehension. The KHLA is a standardised in‐depth norm‐referenced test of language for children in the preschool age range (4; 0–5; 11 years), which was also used for children with specific language impairment (Katzenberger and Meilijson, ). Furthermore, the KHLA measures performance on a task typically performed in the kindergarten setting – story retelling.…”

A systematic review on diagnostic procedures for specific language impairment: The sensitivity and specificity issues

“…However, as much as standardized tests, English-language investigators focused on the diagnostic performances of psycholinguistic markers for differential diagnosis of preschool children with SLI from TD children; moreover, among included studies on subjects who speak languages other than English, two studies used from standardized language or language processing tests or subtests of them as index tests. [234]…”