CSD Faculty Spotlight
Dr. Brian Weiler, Ph.D, CCC-SLP
Assistant Professor
CSD Professor Dr. Brian Weiler was involved in a study focused on the rate of failure
in kindergarten language screenings when the Rice Wexler Test of Early Grammatical
Impairment was used. Dr. Weiler provides a summary of this study and its results:
Researchers Involved:
Brian Weiler- Western Kentucky University
C. Melanie Schuele- Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Jacob I. Feldman, Hannah Krimm- Vanderbilt University
This study was undertaken to address the challenge of under-identification of oral
language impairment (e.g., specific language impairment or SLI, developmental language
disorder or DLD) in the kindergarten population. Epidemiologic studies reveal that
at least 7% of kindergarteners have a language impairment. Of critical concern, only
29% of kindergarten children meeting research criteria for language impairment had
received intervention services, for example from a speech-language-pathologist (SLP;
Tomblin et al., 1997). Mass language screenings at the point of elementary school
entry offer the potential to improve the identification of children at-risk for language
impairment and subsequent academic difficulties.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate, over two separate school years, the school
district-wide failure rate of kindergarteners on a screener of grammatical tense marking
– the Rice Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI) Screening Test – comprised
of Past Tense (PT) and Third Person Singular (3S) Probes. In the fall of two consecutive
school years, consenting and eligible kindergarteners (n = 148 in Year 1; n = 126
in Year 2) in a rural southern school district were administered the TEGI Screening
Test. Children who failed the Screening Test or either of the individual probes (PT
or 3S) were administered the Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence. All children
also completed the Test of Articulation Performance – Screen and, in Year 2, the Get
Ready to Read! emergent literacy screener.
The screening tool outcome most closely and consistently aligned with the recommended
failure rate of ~30% (Oetting et al., 2016; based on Tomblin et al., 1997) was the
TEGI PT Probe. TEGI Screening Test and 3S Probe failure rates fell below the recommended
level. The majority of children who failed the PT Probe demonstrated nonverbal intelligence
skills within the average range. Additionally, the majority of children who failed
the PT Probe would not have been readily identified based only on the results of their
articulation or emergent literacy screenings. To identify children at risk for language
impairment, it is therefore necessary to directly screen oral language.
***Note – the results of this study were presented at the 2017 Symposium on Research
in Child Language Disorders in Madison, WI. A manuscript for this study has been
accepted for publication and is in press at the journal Language, Speech, and Hearing
Services in Schools.
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