Development of Assessment Tools for the Developmental Support of Language and Communication and the Classification of Support Needs

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This research aims at the development of an assessment tool designed to comprehensively assess children's skills necessary to perform adequately in communiation and in academic settings. We extracted appropriate tasks, i. e. tasks whose performance levels consistently increase with age, for language comprehension, language production, and communication based on data from typically developing children. This year, data were obtained from children and persons with developmental disabilities under age 18 (a total of 144 children and persons with intellectual impairment, pervasive developmental disorders with intellectual impairment, and high functioning children/persons with pervasive developmental disorders). Correlation analyses between language age and mental age (MA) based on Tanaka-Binet Intellectual Test V revealed a high correlation (r=0.89, p<0.01) between language age and MA. Furthermore, high correlations were also obtained for each disability type and for persons over age 7, indicating usefulness of this assessment method for young children, school age children, and persons with various developmental disabilities. MA tended to be higher than language developmetal age, with a difference, in average, of 10 months for the group of Down syndrome, and 13.4 months for the PDD groups. Tanaka-Binet test includes visual-motor skill tasks, and this may tend to raise MA for children/persons who have difficulties in language skills.