LAUSR

PURPOSE Language comprehension, or the ability to understand spoken language, is critical to a variety of child outcomes. Effective early intervention relies on valid, reliable language comprehension assessment. The purpose of this study was to explore language comprehension in a sample of toddlers with significant developmental delays associated with varied medical conditions. METHOD We investigated language comprehension in a sample of 112 toddlers by applying Item Response Theory (IRT) methods to two measures; one standardized and one flexible. RESULTS Data from a standardized measure fit the unidimensional model, whereas the flexible measure did not. The overall pattern of results suggested that items related to early social/contextual comprehension are distinct from linguistic comprehension items. CONCLUSION Our findings inform clinical practice by underscoring the importance of comprehensive assessment of language comprehension and considering strengths and weaknesses across social/contextual and linguistic comprehension among toddlers with developmental delays.