KIDTALK: A nonbiased language screening test for children who are Anglo or Hispanic

This study examined the effectiveness of a computerized language screening test called the Kiswa Interactive Diagnostic Test of Aptitude for Language Knowledge (KIDTALK) in separating children on the basis of diagnostic category (i.e., language impaired and non-language impaired), and not on the basis of ethnic/linguistic background (i.e., Anglo/English and Hispanic/Spanish). Thirty-nine 7- and 8-year-old children who were non-language impaired (NLI) and twenty-one 7- and 8-year-old children who were language impaired (LI) were selected for the study. In the NLI category, 18 children were Anglo/English (A/E) and 21 were Hispanic/Spanish (H/S) in ethnicity and language background. In the LI category, 11 children were A/E and 10 were H/S. The participants were individually presented with a set of 40 test items designed to assess their aptitude for acquiring linguistic knowledge of an invented language "Kiswa" which is based on the Kiswahili language. The four subtests included in the test were Receptive Vocabulary (RV), Expressive Vocabulary (EV), Expressive Morphology (EM) and auditory sequential memory (ASM). Results indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the performance of the NLI and LI groups, no significant difference between the performance of the A/E and H/S groups, and no interaction effect. Results also showed that each subtest made a significant and separate contribution to the outcome of KIDTALK as a whole. Fifty-eight percent of the items showed both appropriate levels of difficulty and substantial discriminating power for the total of 60 participants. Seventy-five percent of the items showed minimal differences in percentage correct attained by the A/E and H/S groups. It was concluded that KIDTALK may serve as a model for future screening procedures that is more effective than the currently-used traditional testing and prereferral process screening approaches. Results suggested that systematic refinement of the approach through further research is warranted, not only for use with children who are Anglo and Hispanic, but for children from other ethnic groups as well.