Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills - WebABLLS and Normative Data

WebABLLS and Normative Data

The WebABLLS is an electronic version of the assessment (The ABLLS-R). It allows parents, teachers, speech pathologists, behavior analysts, and others who design, coordinate, and/or supervise language or skill-acquisition programs to expedite the development of IEPs, progress reports, and to easily share information about a child. The WebABLLS provides videos of many skills that are measured by the ABLLS-R and can be used to demonstrate those specific skills.

Over the past four years, parents, relatives and friends of typically developing children have been participating in an ongoing research project by entering data into the WebABLLS (http://www.webablls.com). The data are collected by parents or professionals who both know the children and have received training in the administration of the ABLLS-R. The data are updated at three-month intervals (i.e., 6 months, 9 months, 12 months) in order to track the specific changes in skills over the course of the children’s development. These preliminary data have been collected in a systematic manner to provide information about when each skill measured by the ABLLS-R is usually acquired by typically developing children.

The preliminary data from this research project are from 81 children (42 females & 39 males) ranging in age from 6 months to 60 months. Children are from a variety of geographical locations (both nationally and internationally) and of differing ethnic, socio-economic and educational backgrounds. The average percent of the total possible scores along with the range from the highest to the lowest scores for the sample at each 3-month age intervals are presented. The data clearly indicate that typically developing children demonstrate most of the basic language and learning skills measured by the ABLLS-R by the time they are 4 to 5 years of age.