Abstract

Language sample analysis is accepted as the gold standard in child language assessment. Unfortunately it is often viewed as too time consuming for the practicing clinician. Over the last 15 years a great deal of research has been invested in the automated analysis of child language samples to make the process more time efficient. One step in the analysis process may be precoding the sample, as is used in the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. However, a claim has been made (MacWhinney, 2008) that such precoding in fact leads to lower accuracy because of manual coding errors. No data on this issue have been published. The current research measured the accuracy of language samples analyzed with and without SALT precoding. This study also compared the accuracy of current software to an older version called GramCats (Channell & Johnson 1999). The results presented support the use of precoding schemes such as SALT and suggest that the accuracy of automated analysis has improved over time.

Degree

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

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