Differential Effects on the ITPA [Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities] Profile of the Final Version of the Peabody Language Development Kits (Levels #1 and #2) with Young Disadvantaged Negro Children. IMRID Papers and Reports, Volume 5, No. 24.

The differential effects of the final revision of Levels 1 and 2 of the Peabody Language Development Kits (PLDK) on the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) profiles of young disadvantaged black children were studied. Contrasted with 90 control subjects were 90 experimental subjects who received a daily 30-minute oral language stimulation exercise from the PLDK throughout the school year. The pretesting and interim testing were spread by eight months, while the pretests and posttests were administered 20 months apart. The study took place in elementary schools in a southern inner-city where over three-quarters of the pupils were black. The program was differentially effective only in the vocal expressive and auditory vocal sequential components of the ITPA as measured by the Vocal Encoding and Auditory-Vocal Sequencing subtests. This suggests that PLDK lessons should be coordinated with other grammatical exercises in order to achieve maximum improvement in the major oral language defects of the disadvantaged children of the type studied in this investigation. (Author/TS)