Chapter 5
Early Communication Assessment Process

Students will be able to:
5.1 List the steps in early communication assessment.
5.2 Explain the importance of pre-assessment planning and
preliminary data collecting.
5.3 Describe what to look for in an interactional
observation.
5.4 Explain how to conduct a play-based interactional
assessment.
5.5 Explain how assessment procedures may differ for
children with specific disorders

Screening is often the first step
– Screenings by their nature are a gross estimate of
performance
– Parent-completed screenings are appropriate for EI
– Discussion of role of screening in bilingual children
with caution regarding use of standardized screening
tools
– List of possible screening tools on Table 5-1

Need to establish need for services for children in the At-
Risk category and those thresholds vary by state in the EI
system
• Describe child’s communication abilities
• Relate those abilities to partners in familiar
environments/contexts
• Describe communication behaviors of the child’s partners
• Identify the child’s responses to various prompts
• Discover promising intervention techniques

Use Multiple Measures - can include but should not be limited to standardized tools; most children who are non-symbolic will need informal assessment measures
• Transdisciplinary teams -maximizes collaboration among
team members to build consensus with the family
• Ecologically valid - should include information about the child, the partner, and the environment.

Although not commonly used, pre-assessment meeting among
practitioners recommended to collaborate on purpose/methods/roles
during assessment
• Initial contact with family to begin gather information about
preferences, priorities and typically followed up by a Questionnaire
• Questionnaire - can be completed in writing or verbally with the
clinician (best to offer family choice of the two)
• Sample Questionnaire is contained in Appendix C
• Parents are good reporters of behavior for example, inventory of
words that their child can say
• Spanish-speaking tools for questionnaires listed on p.150

Does not replace the questionnaire
• Best if you can record
• Conversational but not unstructured, sample in Figure 5-2
• Open Questions to address
– How they child communicates basic wants/needs
– Family goals of the assessment process
– Motivational methods for the child
– History of intervention and assessment
– Cultural and linguistic environment

Will include observing child’s communicative behaviors
• Caregiver interaction style and responsiveness
• Impact of the larger environment.
• Record, but halt if parents become concerned

Collaborative with parents, but want to be representative - make sure
to inquire about the reliability of the observations
– Examine the child’s intentionality of communication and the
child’s success with communication
– Caregivers can be barriers to a child’s development based on
interaction style and responsiveness
▪ Difficult to discuss with caregivers but some suggested
language would be “Did you notice…” states or “Is there
another way…” or “how do you think….” -focused on
empowerment not judgment
▪ Description of caregiver interaction styles in Table 5-2
▪ Look for presence of contingent responsiveness

Team often will generate preliminary hypotheses using
combined data from observations, questionnaire,
interview - See Figure 5-5 for examples

Offers the opportunity to test hypotheses and to gather more
assessment information
• Three Steps
– Build rapport through interacting with the child in preferred
routines, following his/her lead, and being responsive to
communication attempts - See Figure 5-6 for tips on building
rapport
– Assess through unstructured play by building in opportunities for
a variety of intentional communication behaviors - optimal if
caregiver can be involved with motivating materials
– Structured opportunities to elicit behaviors not already
reported/produced - several opportunities both with and without
support

Utilized to determine not only what a child knows but how
a child requires novel content including what supportive
strategies are helpful
– Rooted in the concept of Vgotsky’s Zone of Proximal
Development, determining the level at which a child
can accomplish a task with supports being close to
what is already known.
– Dynamic assessment utilizes a test-teach-retest
model for instruction
– Mediated assistance utilized, individualized guidance
to determine amount and type optimal for each child

Scaffold support on what is already known with
minimum amount of support necessary for the child to
be successful
– Figure 5-8 provides an example of dynamic
assessment for requesting

Elicit communication through either communication temptations or
context manipulation
– Communication temptation is to provide an opportunity for
communication so tempting that a child is compelled to engage
▪ for example, a caregiver gets out a cookie and begins to eat
it in front of the child - More examples available in Figure 5-7
– Context manipulation - manipulate environment in ways that
promote communication
▪ for example, give a child parts but now all of the materials
need to complete a task - more examples included on page
163

Determined by the child’s behavior and the specific intention the child
is attempting to convey
– Table 5-3 describes Stages of Intentional Communication
– Intentional behavior is consistent with intentions including
▪ obtaining attention,
▪ requesting,
▪ protesting,
▪ commenting,
▪ initiating play,
▪ giving an object to another person
▪ symbolic intentions listed in Table 5-4
– Also probe for success following a communication breakdown -
Is the child persistent?

At minimum SLP wants to know if the child associates the referent to
the spoken word
• Person/object names, actions and words that signify actions,
functional words such as “more” and “no”
• Probe in routines to increase reliability and validity
• Provide multiple opportunities for the child to demonstrate
understanding
• Is lack of response indicative of lack of understanding or something
else such as lack of attention?
• Dynamic assessment format for receptive language in Table F-1 in
Appendix F

Divided into analysis of
– speech intelligibility -measures include percentage of intelligible
words and percentage of consonants correct
– phonotactic characteristics - want to measure repertoire of
sounds and syllables can be used to select vocabulary targets
often obtained through a 50 consecutive vocalization sample
▪ Measure with mean babbling level (MBL) described in Table
5-5
▪ Measure with syllable structure level (SSL) described in
Table 5-6
– structure of gesture and speech combinations - can measure
with a language sample analysis form see Figure 5-9

intentions expressed -measure breadth of intentions
which frequently include requesting information and
acknowledgment but include many others
– vocabulary - common measures include reports of
inventory, lexical density, type token ratio (TTR)

Largely discussed in Chapter 4 but some additional notes
on measuring
– Joint attention/attention following
– Motor imitation
– Oral motor skills
– Sound making
– Functional Use
– Level of Play

Children with Deafness and Blindness - even more important
to focus on repeated observations and to prioritize non-
symbolic communicative behaviors with several possible
observational tools listed on page. 180
• International Adoptees - important not to dismiss birth
language as those aspects may be present including prosodic
and phonological elements
• Children with Challenging Behaviors - What is the function(s)
of the challenging behavior necessary to establish in order to
try to teaching replacement behaviors that are functionally
equivalent and to work with environmental variables that may
be maintaining the behavior

Motor Speech Disorders - want to examine any gap
between comprehension and poorer speech production,
structure/function of the oral mechanism, and a phonetic
inventory
• ASD - Flexible protocol is available in Figure 5-11 for
assessment but want to establish rapport, systematically
determine preferences, and utilize preferences
systematically to determine communication function and
level for children with ASD.