TACL-4

Each item is composed of a word or sentence and a corresponding picture plate that has three full-color drawings. One of the three pictures for each item illustrates the meaning of the word, morpheme, or syntactic structure being tested. The other two pictures illustrate either two semantic or grammatical contrasts to the stimulus, or one contrast and one decoy. The examiner reads the stimulus aloud, and the subject is directed to point to the picture that he or she believes best represents the meaning of the word, phrase, or sentence spoken by the examiner. No oral response is required on the part of the subject.

Reliability and validity studies were conducted out with individuals with normal language abilities and individuals who had previously been diagnosed with learning disabilities, ADHD, deaf/hard of hearing, Articulation Disorder, Language Impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Intellectual Disorders as well as those who have been identified as gifted and talented.

TACL-4 coefficients alpha range between .94 and .96 for the subtests and is .97 for the Receptive Language Index. Average correlations with popular criterion measures of receptive language ability range from .67 to .71. Studies of diagnostic accuracy as it relates to sensitivity (median = .77), specificity (median =.84), classification accuracy (median = .80), and receiver operating characteristic/area under the curve (median = .88) are reported.

The TACL-4 was co-normed with and is a companion to the Test of Expressive Language (TEXL; Carrow-Woolfolk & Allen, 2014). Because the tests are co-normed, TACL-4 results can be meaningfully compared to those of the TEXL. Norms for the TACL-4 are based on a nationally-representative sample of 1,142 children in the U.S. Percentile ranks, standard scores, and age equivalents are provided.