Keywords

assessment, bilingualism, crosslinguistic comparisons, diagnosis, international adoption, language and communication, multilingualism

 

Authors

  1. Roberts, Jenny A. PhD
  2. Scott, Kathleen A. PhD

Abstract

Research on the language development of internationally adopted children has increased substantially in the past few years, with a variety of methods used to measure language abilities in this population, including parent and teacher reports, norm-referenced tests, conversational and narrative language samples, and other procedures. These summative and formative measures have yielded differing findings across studies, as they indicate a mixed picture of potential risk and resilience shown by children who are internationally adopted. For the practicing clinician, conflicting results for language abilities of internationally adopted children adopted at varying ages, from varying regions of the world, and from specific cohorts have made assessment results somewhat difficult to interpret. This article will discuss how clinicians can utilize best practices in assessment methods for the internationally adopted population to help determine appropriate assessment and intervention techniques for children who may require speech-language services.