What is it about?
Language sample analysis can be used to assess social communication skills in school-age children. This tutorial explains why language sampling should and can be used to gain valuable social communication information. The reader will also learn specific tips and tricks for providing socially driven prompts and interactions to gain the desired social communication data.
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Why is it important?
Few current assessments provide natural, complex contexts for measuring social skills in real time. Using language sample analysis focused on social communication skills will provide professionals with more specific intervention targets and lead to increased progess.
Perspectives
As a school-based speech-language pathologist, I worked with many children who had difficulty meeting the nuanced social demands of the academic environment. I was often looking for a way to get at the root of some of these difficulties, and norm-referenced assessment tools did not meet that need. I want other professionals to be able to get assessment and progress monitoring data that is useful and beneficial for the students they serve.
Nichole Mulvey
Eastern Illinois University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Flexible Use of Language Sampling to Measure Social Communication Skills: A Tutorial, Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, August 2026, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2026_persp-25-00276.
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