Examiner's Manual & Technical Report - Kaplanco.com

Ceiling RulesThe child’s ceiling level of performance is the point above which it is assumed that the child willfail all subsequent items. The examiner should stop the assessment of a subscale when the ceilingis obtained.1. After the basal has been determined, the examiner should continue administering itemsuntil the first occurrence of three minuses in a five-item sequence. This defines thechild's ceiling level of performance. The assessment should end at this point.2. After the third minus (-), count backward to determine if there are three minuses in afive-item span. If not, continue the assessment, counting backward after each minusthereafter to determine if the ceiling has been achieved.3. In some cases, the basal and ceiling may overlap. (Basal items may be counted as part ofthe five-item span of the ceiling.)4. If the child reaches the end of the subscale without accumulating three minuses out offive consecutive items, use the last item of the subscale as the ceiling.5. Once the ceiling is determined, the examiner should mark a heavy line below the lastminus of the ceiling. It is not necessary to administer any further items in the subscaleonce the ceiling has been obtained to derive an accurate score.In Figure 4, Jorge’s chronological age is 54 months. Examine the ceilings for each example,indicated by the heavy line.26