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Introduction
The NIH Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function is the result of a 6-year contract funded by the NIH Neuroscience Blueprint to create a battery of assessments of Cognition, Emotion, Motor, and Sensory function that could be used as a form of common currency across research studies. This study highlights the development of the Cognition instruments to assess Language. The NIH Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test (TPVT) assesses vocabulary comprehension; the NIH Toolbox Oral Reading Recognition Test (TORRT) assesses reading decoding.
Subdomain Definition
Language is a fundamental human capacity that facilitates communication and thought. In an increasingly literate world, language skills are powerful predictors of adaptive functioning and health (Burton, Strauss, Hultsch & Hunter, 2006). Language promotes the transmission of culture, values, and history. Language skills predict communicative competence and subsequent overall academic performance (Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2002; Scarborough, 2001). The importance of language across the lifespan for cognitive and social development and for academic success and work achievement, as confirmed by rankings provided by surveys of hundreds of NIH-funded epidemiologists, provided impetus for its inclusion in the NIH Toolbox (Gershon et al., 2010; Nowinski, Victorson, Debb, & Gershon, 2013; Victorson et al., 2013; Weintraub et al., 2013).
There is general agreement on language milestones and the processes whereby they are acquired (Fenson et al., 1994; Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 1999; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996). In childhood, all components of language competence, namely phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, are undergoing development. In adulthood, some language skills remain substantially intact with advancing age. Vocabulary continues to develop as individuals acquire more words through experience (Salthouse, 1988). Because of the need to have the NIHTB-CB measures apply to a broad age range, word knowledge and reading were selected as particularly relevant for measurement across the lifespan.
In healthy normal individuals, tests of reading and vocabulary knowledge, can serve as useful "proxy" measures for deriving an estimate (Baumann, 2009) of overall intellectual ability since there is a high correlation between IQ scores and vocabulary (Smith, Smith, Taylor, & Hobby, 2005). Vocabulary knowledge also has been found to be an effective marker of the level of acculturation in minority groups (Deyo, Diehl, Hazuda, & Stern, 1985). Reading...