Language comprehension in toddlers with significant developmental delays: An IRT approach.

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.
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