Norm-Referenced Testing (W6-7) Flashcards
What is norm-referenced testing?
You have psychometric standardized scores to compare it to
Which do you think is easier for a parent to understand - standard scores or age equivalence?
Age equivalence
Definition of age equivalence score
Find the age ground thats median score is your child’s raw score
What is the problem with AE scores?
- Do not take variability into account so you don’t really know how to interpret the score
- The scale changes with age
What do you report, standard scores and/or age/grade equivalents?
Also explain and report the standard score, but you should also use percentiles because they’re easier to understand than AE or SS
What are the two methods for determining the cut off for the presence/absence of a disorder
1- pick a cut-off criteria (z-score) and use it (for any test)
2- Find an empirically derived cutoff score from test/s that report acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity
Which method for determining a cutoff score is almost always used?
-Picking a cut-off criteria (z-score) and using it for any and all tests
Using one cutoff score for all tests results in what?
-under-identification of kids with LI (because it’s normally distributed, so if the school requires 1.5 SD below the mean, it’s missing a lot of kids on the high end of LI)
Which tests had the smallest group differences?
vocabulary tests
Which tests had the largest group differences?
-morphosyntax tests
Omnibus reading test - GORT-5 (what does the kid do)
- Read passages aloud (range from easiest to hardest)
- Examiner notes errors & time
- Child then answers questions
What scores does the GORT-5 result in?
-Accuracy (errors)
-Speed (time - called ‘rate’)
-Fluency = accuracy + speed
Comprehension (generated from questions)
Oral reading quotient = fluency + comprehension
Omnibus reading test - WRMT-III (what does the kid do)
- Phonological awareness (first sound matching, last sound matching, rhyme production, blending, deletion)
- Listening comp
- Letter ID
- Word ID (decoding real words)
- Rapid automatic naming
- Oral reading fluency
- Word attack (decoding nonsense words)
- Word comp (antonyms, synonyms, analogies)
- Passage comp
If children are not decoding well, what might be going on?
Dyslexia!
What should you assess if you suspect dyslexia?
- Listening comp vs. reading comp. (should be a discrepancy)
- All components of phonological processing (awareness, memory, retrieval)
- Non-word repetition
If children don’t perform well on reading comprehension, what might be going on?
-May have dyslexia or SCD
What should you assess if they aren’t performing well on reading comprehension?
- Look at decoding time, fluency
- Look at general oral language to determine if there is a discrepancy or not
Reading comp testing: a caveat – There is a trade off between _________ and _______ in these tests.
It’s really hard to test well! - there is a trade off between reliability and validity in these tests (the MC questions can be answered without the passage – the fill in the blank are more reliable but harder to score)
T/F: psychoeducational evaluations complement, but also overlap with, language evaluations.
TRUE
What do IQ tests assess and how is it assessed in school-aged children?
WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) is the most common for kids 6-16 y/o (younger version is WPPSI)
*IQ tests test ABILITY
What do achievement tests asses and how are they assessed?
- Achievement tests assess performance / knowledge
- Assessed with the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Battery III
T/F: Under traditional LD models, discrepancies between IQ and achievement indicate LD
TRUE
