The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes: what it is and how to use it

Language, both written and oral, is essential to be able to understand and function in the social world, given that it is what allows us to share our internal world and also understand what others think and think the rest.

Of course, presenting problems in this very human aspect is a serious matter, in which due professional intervention is required.

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes It is a diagnostic test used in boys and girls to evaluate if they have any type of problem in the multiple components that make up the psycholinguistic functions, allowing to initiate an intervention focused on alleviating the deficits that may to have.

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What is the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes?

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes, whose authors are Samuel A. Kirk, James J. McCarthy and Winifred D. Kirk, is a diagnostic instrument whose main objective is detect both the strengths and the specific difficulties that boys and girls may manifest

between 3 and 10 years. Its application lasts about 60 minutes and you only need two notebooks with linguistic stimuli, a note book, a timer and correction templates.

This test serves as a tool to evaluate language problems and, in this way, develop an educational intervention, measuring the psycholinguistic functions involved in the communicative capacity of children, which can serve as indicators of a possible developmental and learning disorder.

The validity of this questionnaire, which aims to assess the psycholinguistic processes in boys and girls in their childhood and preadolescence, is high, and has been carried out using the Pearson correlation test. In addition, it has high reliability.

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What do you evaluate and how do you do it?

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes measures, as we were already mentioning in the previous section, several of the psycholinguistic functions of boys and girls. These capacities become very important when carrying out satisfactorily communication, both oral and written.

The questionnaire is made up of 11 subtests, which are grouped into two channels, the first 5 being subtests exposed here grouped within the visuomotor channel and the following 6 would be in the channel auditoryvocal.

Subtest number 12 presented here corresponds to one that has been discarded in more recent editions of the questionnaire, however it is interesting to dedicate a brief mention to it.

1. visual comprehension

The capacity of the evaluated person to obtain the meaning of the symbols that are presented to him visually is observed.

The child is asked that teaches a certain object or person shown on a piece of paper or sheet of the questionnaire.

2. visuomotor sequential memory

Here the ability to reproduce from memory sequences of figures without a clear meaning is evaluated. after being briefly presented with a sequence, testing the short-term memory of the child.

This subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes is ideal for evaluating coordination visuomotor of the child, in addition to allowing to observe if he is capable of discerning between the figure drawn and the background.

Knowing how to differentiate between one figure and another presented in two dimensions is essential. to be able to acquire reading and writing skills satisfactorily.

3. visual association

It allows to see what capacity the child has to relate concepts that are presented visually. Drawings are presented that the evaluated person has to relate to another previous drawing..

This subtest allows you to work on various aspects, such as motor expression, lexical comprehension, eye-motor coordination, oral expression and symbolic play.

4. visual integration

It is observed how capable the child is of identifying animals, objects or other types of groups of known elements from a schematic or incomplete representation of these.

So it is possible to see the child's ability to discern between the figure and the background, which as we were commenting previously, is a key skill when learning to read and write.

5. motor expression

This subtest may seem the least related to a person's psycholinguistic abilities, but the truth is that the ability to manually gesture meanings It is perhaps the most complicated thing that can be done if you are a hearing person.

It is measured by presenting drawings of everyday objects in which the child has the task of imitating how he would use it or expressing it in the form of gestures in the most unequivocal way possible.

6. Auditive comprehension

The test allows evaluating the child's ability to obtain the meaning of spoken language, in addition to working on her visuomotor coordination.

To measure listening comprehension, a fragment of a text is read aloud to the child, adapted to her age. Immediately afterwards, she is shown some sheets with drawings that refer to what she has heard.

Starting from this, the child is asked questions to see if she has understood what has been read to her, asking him to indicate which images are most appropriate to the text or the facts described in it.

7. auditory association

The child's ability to relate concepts that are presented orally. This is of great importance in spoken language, allowing to relate what is being said with what has already been said, having a clear idea of ​​the subject that is being discussed.

To test this ability to handle meaningful linguistic symbols orally, a series of verbal analogies is made, with increasing difficulty.

In addition to seeing the child's oral capacity, it is also possible to see what is the lexical level and her ability to recover the vocabulary that she has been acquiring.

8. auditory sequential memory

It allows orally evaluating the immediate recall of non-meaningful material. In other words, it allows knowing what vocabulary recovery capacity the child has but without talking about a specific topic or related to a list of words.

The test consists of repeating a series of two to eight digits, working on short-term memory and auditory perception.

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9. Verbal expression

Is evaluated the verbal fluency and lexicon that the child possesses with respect to a semantic field concrete. In this way, it is observed how much they know about a particular topic and if the vocabulary needs to be worked on because it is deficient for their age.

This can be analyzed from the number of concepts that the child can describe verbally, in addition to to associate them with others and use their real names instead of resorting to vague and incomplete.

10. grammatical integration

This subtest makes it possible to evaluate the child's syntactic and grammatical ability by presenting her with incomplete sentences that she must complete with drawings. The evaluated must complete them so that they acquire a meaningful meaning.

here it is possible work on many aspects related to the aspects previously described, such as their listening and visual comprehension, as well as seeing their command of the vocabulary related to the sentence to be completed.

11. auditory integration

Evaluate the ability to produce a word from the pronunciation of the first phonemes of the same. For example, the child can be asked 'what am I talking about? Candy...'

12. sound meeting

The ability to synthesize the sounds separated by a word is evaluated, in order to produce the complete word.

Test application rules

As with other tests, it is essential to respect a series of rules so that the evaluation carried out with the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes is as objective and reliable as possible. So that, It is necessary to take into account the following aspects during the application of this test:

• Thoroughly master the questionnaire from tests prior to its application.
• Application environment must be adequate and without distracting elements.
• You must capture the interest of the child to perform the test.
• Test materials must be in the best possible condition.
• The test must be applied all in one session.
• When applying the test, the evaluator and the evaluated must be seated face to face.
• It is recommended to have the manual on hand.

How to improve the child's psycholinguistic skills?

It is possible that after the test has been applied some deficits, both visuomotor and auditory, have been found in the child. Although this may be an indicator of a language, development, or learning disorder, it being necessary to go to a professional, it may also be that it is only a problem minor. In any case, There are a number of strategies that can be applied to improve the child's psycholinguistic abilities..

One of the best things that parents can do is tell stories to their children, since that way they will be able to see first-hand what their comprehension capacity is, in addition to seeing what they have understood from the story that has been given to them. explained. This also helps to expand their vocabulary and also their ability to explain what they have understood.

Another option is to ask him to explain the world around him. They may be asked to describe what butterflies are like, what things they have seen today in class or on the street, what their classmates are like at school...

Bibliographic references:

• Junqué Y Plaja, C., Bruna and Rabassa, O., & Mataró and Serrat, M. (2004). Neuropsychology of language: Normal and Pathological Functioning. Rehabilitation. Barcelona.: Masson
• Kirk, S., McCarthy, J., & Kirk, W. (2009). Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes (7th edition. ed.). (S. Ballesteros, & A. Cordero, Trads.) Madrid: TEA Editions.
• Martinez, E. (2002). Linguistics: theory and applications. Barcelona: Masson.
• Narbona, J., & Chevrie-Muller, C. (2003). The Language of the Child. Normal Development, Evaluation and Disorders (2nd. ed.). Barcelona: Masson.