Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities—Third Edition (ITPA-3) consists of 12 subtests that take approximately 45 to 60 minutes to administer. This edition of the ITPA is designed to assess spoken and written features of language. Norms are provided that permit evaluation of whether a child is developing normally or is at risk for school failure. The scoring system provides information on overall strengths and weaknesses in the general areas of spoken and written language as well as in specific features of language. This information may be used in identifying areas for further in-depth testing or tracking the effects of intervention over time.

The ITPA-3 represents a substantial revision. An experimental version first appeared in 1961, and an expanded version appeared in 1968. Unlike the previous versions, the third edition contains only subtests that measure some aspect of language performance. In addition, the subtests require reading and writing. Thus, the age range has been revised to 5 years, 0 months through 12 years, 11 months of age. Only children 6 years, 6 months of age or older may be administered the written subtests.

Half of the 12 subtests are presented auditorily and require verbal responses. Two subtests assess word knowledge (semantics) by analogies (e.g., birds have nests, lions have ___) and definitions (e.g., I am thinking of something that has paws—possible answer “dog,” “cat”). Two subtests assess knowledge of morphology and grammar through a cloze procedure (e.g., one dog, two ____) and verbatim imitation of grammatical but semantically anomalous sentences (e.g., Cats like to ice skate). Awareness of the phonological (sound) structure of words is assessed in two subtests: one requiring deletion of sounds within a word and another requiring repetition of sequences of rhyming words.

The remaining six subtests require reading and formulation of written responses. Ability to read sentences and comprehend word meaning is required in two subtests: One involves organizing sentences into logical sequences, and a second involves writing nouns that may be combined with specific adjectives (e.g., a giant _____). This latter subtest requires [Page 452]knowledge of restrictions on the combination of nouns and adjectives. The final four subtests assess the ability to pronounce and spell words with irregular and regular forms.

The scoring system provides composite scores that identify general as well as specific abilities. The raw scores for each subtest may be converted to standard scores and percentile ranks as well as age and grade equivalents. Composite scores for general and specific abilities are derived by adding scores from selected subtests. The composite scores can be converted to quotients and percentile ranks. Both the standard scores for each subtest and the quotients for all of the composite scores may be plotted on a profile that indicates whether the scores are within, above, or below one standard deviation from the mean.

The test is based on Osgood's model of communication, which postulates multiple levels of organization and processing as well as multiple channels of input and output. The test assesses features of linguistic knowledge; expressive and receptive skills, including auditory memory; and some cognitive abilities. Early decoding skills for print-to-sound correspondences and orthographic knowledge are assessed by four of the written subtests.

...