The Test of Semantic Skills-Intermediate: Normative Update (TOSS-I: NU) is an individually administered test of semantic skills in older elementary and adolescent children. The test analyzes students’ semantic skills, including labeling, categorizing, identifying attributes and functions, and defining words. The Picture Book contains 18 illustrations depicting natural, real-life scenes related to these common themes: school, learning, community, home, leisure activities, and the environment. Test items emphasize vocabulary that is meaningful and relevant to late elementary and middle school students. The test can be used to identify students with semantic skills deficits, plan interventions, and represent semantic skills in research studies.
New Features
- Updated norms reflect the demographics of the 2017 U.S. Census.
- The normative sample (N = 1,241) is stratified by age relative to geographic region, gender, race, and ethnicity.
- A new standard score metric has been implemented for the subtests and composite (M = 10, SD = 3; M = 100, SD = 15, respectively).
- New item-analysis and item-bias studies provide convincing evidence of content-description validity.
- New reliability and validity studies were prepared, including diagnostic accuracy analyses, which are considered the most rigorous techniques for establishing a test’s validity. These analyses involve the computation of sensitivity and specificity indexes and the receiver operating characteristic/area under the curve (ROC/AUC) statistic.
Description of the Test
The test has two subtests—Receptive Language and Expressive Language—that yield scaled scores. A composite score, called the Semantic Skills Index, represents overall performance on the subtests. The subtests may also be informally analyzed by skill area. The examiner’s manual contains a comprehensive discussion of the test’s theoretical and research-based foundation, item development, standardization, administration and scoring procedures, norms tables, and guidelines for using and interpreting the test’s results. Reliability and validity studies were conducted with a sample of students with a wide range of semantic abilities.
The average coefficient alphas for the Receptive Language and the Expressive Language subtests are .87 and .89, respectively. The alpha for the composite is .93. New validity studies demonstrate the test’s ability to differentiate students with language impairments from typically developing students. Specifically, a Semantic Skills Index cutoff score of 90 resulted in a sensitivity of .86, a specificity of .85, and a ROC/AUC of .91.
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