Research leads to groundbreaking language and literacy skill assessment test

This fall, the Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Inc. in Baltimore has published the Test of Integrated Language & Literacy Skills™ (TILLS™), a groundbreaking assessment that tests listening, speaking, reading and writing skills in students ages 6–18. The test was developed by Ph.D. in interdisciplinary health sciences program director Dr. Nickola Nelson and colleagues Dr. Elena Plante at the University of Arizona; Dr. Nancy Helm-Estabrooks, professor emerita at Western Carolina University; and Dr. Gillian Hotz at the University of Miami.

The publication of this test coincides with a time when there is an international effort to heighten awareness of the relationships between language disorders and reading disorders. This past May, Nelson gave an invited keynote address and taught a master workshop and seminar based on the TILLS™ research and related clinical research at the national conference of Speech Pathology Australia in Canberra, Australia. In the keynote, Nelson raised concerns about the lack of an agreed-upon global label for language disorders in childhood that cannot be explained by some other diagnosis, such as autism or hearing loss.

To support arguments for co-occurrence of language and literacy disorders, Nelson described evidence gathered during standardization of TILLS™, adding her voice to a recent discussion in an international journal by emphasizing the need to name literacy problems explicitly in any label for language disorders during the school-age years. Addressing this need, the TILLS™ is the only test that assesses both spoken and written language and shows how these skills relate to each other within a theoretical framework supported by scientific evidence. The TILLS is designed and tested to help professionals streamline assessment, monitor progress and ultimately improve students’ communication skills so they can succeed in school.

The research was supported by a nearly $2M grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences to Western Michigan University, 2010-15, in collaboration with Dr. E. Brooks Applegate in the Department of Education Leadership, Research and Technology, and coordinated by Dr. Michele A. Anderson, senior research associate at WMU.

Nelson continues to conduct standardization research related to TILLS™ and was asked to submit an article for publication based on the keynote address to the special conference Issue of International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She is editor of the journal Topics in Language Disorders and has published widely on language-literacy, including Language and Literacy Disorders: Infancy through Adolescence (Allyn & Bacon, 2010). A Board Certified Specialist in Child Language, Nelson is also a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. She is a recipient of the Kleffner Clinical Career Award from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation and of the Honors of the Association.