Who shall be Called Language Disordered? Some Reflections and One Perspective

¹ Emerson College, Boston

This paper discusses some issues involved in identifying children who have language problems. The perspective taken is that (a) the goal of identification must be clearly distinguished from other goals of assessment; (b) identification of children with language disorders is better based on language performance than on inferences about the language knowledge that underlies this performance; (c) language performance must be sampled in more than one context, including, for purposes of identification, contexts that stress the language system; (d) the standards of expectations for comparing performance and determining differences must be explicit; (e) standards used to determine differences are better based on the performance of chronological-age peers than on the performance of children with similar mental abilities; and (f) children who do not evidence poor language performance but are considered at risk for language-related problems should be distinguished from children who demonstrate poor language skills.

Key Words: language assessment • language disorders in children • age-equivalence scores • identifying language disorders • cognition and language

Submitted on April 20, 1989
Accepted on February 9, 1990

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