nicole kotras masters thesis

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then taken as an indication of the child's mastery of a particular aspect of language.
There are two types of elicitation procedures. The first involves the child making a
non-verbal response to a verbal stimulus, and is used as a measure of the child's
comprehension of spoken language. The second requires the child to make a verbal
response to either a verbal or a non-verbal stimulus, and is used as a measure of the
child's ability to produce spoken language. In the present study the latter procedure,
which involves the child generating a verbal response to a non-verbal stimulus, was
utilized. The language area sampled in this procedure is production (or expression),
as opposed to comprehension (Griffiths, 1970).
The main advantages of elicitation procedures, is that they give a relatively
high degree of control over areas of linguistic ability which are being assessed.
Furthermore, because the child is provided with simplified situations which have
been specifically designed to help the child understand what is required, it might be
argued that elicitation procedures should provide an optimal measure of
performance.
Formal tests are the largest category of language assessment instruments.
All of these tests rely upon some combination of elicitation strategies. To the extent
that tests provide a standard form for the administration of these strategies, they are
referred to as "standardized tests" (Harris, 1990). A limited selection of utilized
standardized tests of childrens' language will be described. Since different tests are
designed to assess different aspects of linguistic ability, they will be considered
under four categories, namely: tests of articulation; tests of vocabulary; tests of
grammatical ability; and tests of more general aspects of psycholinguistic ability.
Articulation tests
The Edinburgh Articulation Test (EAT) is designed as a screening measure
for children whose articulation of English consonants is retarded or otherwise
abnormal. The elicitation procedure includes the use of a picture stimulus. The
procedure for administering the EAT, is to elicit a series of 68 non-imitated words
from the child in response to a set of pictures. Normative scoring involves marking