Toward culturally appropriate communication assessment

Our researchers have attempted to ascertain the utility of the Hearing and Talking Scale (HATS) for assessing communication skills. They have published this research and will present their findings at an upcoming conference.

There has been relatively little research on the very early communication development of Indigenous Australian children at risk for communication impairment, such as would be the case for autistic children and children with intellectual and developmental disability/delay more generally. For example, there appears to be little research into the development and validation of culturally appropriate communication assessments that could be used by teachers to assess the communication development of young Indigenous Australian children with autism.

Given the promising results reported by Ching et al., (2020), the present study sought to ascertain the utility of the Hearing and Talking Scale (HATS) for assessing communication skills of Indigenous Australian children with autism given that such children would be expected to present with communication, speech, and language delay and impairment.

The two questions addressed in the present study were (a) whether the children’s early childhood teachers could easily complete the HATS and (b) whether the degree of communication difficulty revealed by a HATS assessment was comparable to the level of communication delay/development revealed by another standardized, norm-referenced assessment of receptive and expressive language development.

The second author’s participation in this project (Miss Jessica Wilson – Wiradjuri mob) was supported by a Macquarie University Research Internship funded by the Australian Government’s Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program and the Walanga Muru on campus support service.

Collaborating NGO Community Support Service:

  • SDN Children’s Services
  • First Nation led early intervention centres

Sincere appreciation is extended to staff and students of the participating Autism specific Early Intervention Centre, and to Professor Michael Donovan (Gumbaynggir mob) for his cultural support.

Project Outputs:

  • Publication: Tait, K., Wilson, J. and Sigafoos, J. (2024 accepted). Toward culturally appropriate communication assessment for Indigenous Australian children with autism. Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disability.
  • Conference Presentation: (2024) Associate Professor Tait will be presenting the results of this research project at the International Conference on Special Needs Education and Different Approaches to Teaching.