A comparison of the performance of cerebral palsied and normal children on two tests of language concept development

The purpose of this study was to determine if any differences existed in the performance of children with cerebral palsy and normal children on two concept identification tests-the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts and the Synpro symbol identification test.

The study included ten cerebral palsied and ten normal subjects who were matched on vocabulary recognition age. The data consisted of the subjects' responses to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (for vocabulary recognition age scores and IQs), the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts (BTBC) and the Synpro symbol identification test (SSIT).

Statistical anlaysis of the data indicated that: 1) the normal children performed better than the cerebral palsied children on the two language concept tests, 2) there was not a significant relationship between the SSIT and BTBC for either the cerebral palsied or the normal children, and 3) a moderately high and significant correlation existed between the PPVT age scores and the BTBC for the cerebral palsied subjects and a high and significant relationship existed between the PPVT IQs and the SSIT for the normal population. Analysis of the data also indicated that more subjects were able to identify concepts on the BTBC than on the SSIT, when a comparison was made for the time, space and quantity categories.