Interest Age: 5 to 21
2018The TAPS-4 provides information about language processing and comprehension skills across three intersecting areas:
- phonological processing,
- auditory memory
- listening comprehension.
These areas underpin the development of effective listening and communication skills, and are critical to the development of higher order language skills, including literacy skills. The TAPS‐4 is intended to be used by speech-language pathologists, psychologists, educational and learning specialists, and other professionals who need a reliable and valid measure of auditory language abilities in children, adolescents, and young adults.
The TAPS-4 features new subtests along with revisions to subtests from the TAPS-3, fully updated norms, and an expanded age range. The TAPS-4 subtests were also reorganised into Index and Supplemental subtests, reducing testing burden and increasing flexibility in administration.
The TAPS-4 also features audio administration for the subtests in which proper pronunciation of speech sounds is critical, providing a greater degree of standardisation and accuracy during the testing process.
The TAPS-4 has 11 subtests, organised into three indices:
Phonological Processing Index:
- Word (Pair) Discrimination: Assesses an individual’s ability to discriminate whether a given word pair is the same or different
- Phonological Deletion: Assesses an individual’s ability to manipulate phonemes within words
- Phonological Blending: Assesses an individual’s ability to synthesise a word given the individual phonemes
- Syllabic Blending (Supplemental): Assesses an individual’s ability to synthesise a nonsense word given the individual syllables
Auditory Memory Index:
- Number Memory Forward: Assesses an individual’s ability to recall an auditory sequence of numbers in the given order
- Word Memory: Assesses an individual’s ability to recall an auditory sequence of words in the given order
- Sentence Memory: Assesses an individual’s ability to recall a spoken sentence
- Number Memory Reversed (Supplemental): Assesses an individual’s ability to recall an auditory sequence of numbers in the reverse order
Listening Comprehension Index:
- Processing Oral Directions (without background noise): Assesses an individual’s ability to process and recall oral directions when presented in quiet listening conditions
- Auditory Comprehension: Assesses an individual’s ability to comprehend oral language at the sentence and narrative level, including literal recall, inference, and higher order language tasks such as idioms and figurative language
- Auditory Figure-Ground (Processing Oral Directions with background noise) (Supplemental): Assesses an individual’s ability to process and recall oral directions when presented with competing background noise
The TAPS-4 assesses five narrow abilities across three broad skill areas as defined in the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of cognitive abilities:
Short-Term Memory
- Memory Span (MS)
- Working Memory Capacity (MW)
Auditory Processing
- Phonetic Coding (PC)
- Resistance to Auditory Stimulus Distortion (UR)
Comprehension-Knowledge
Administration and Scoring
TAPS-4 Index subtests can be administered in one hour or less. Scaled scores are provided for subtests; standard scores are provided for cores and the overall score. Discrepancy scores allow comparison of performance across subtests.
- Individual Administration
- Ages 5 through 21
- Norm–Referenced
- Testing Time: 60–90 Minutes
Features of the new Fourth Edition of this popular assessment:
- three new subtests were added to the TAPS-4: Processing Oral Directions, Auditory Figure-Ground, and Syllabic Blending.
- the Auditory Comprehension and Auditory Reasoning subtests from the TAPS-3 were combined and revised into one subtest, Auditory Comprehension
- new items were tested and included in Word Discrimination, Phonological Deletion (previously Phonological Segmentation), Phonological Blending, Word Memory, and Sentence Memory, and scoring was revised for all of the Auditory Memory Index subtests.
- also the first 6 subtests are now presented on pre-recorded tracks available on CD, providing more consistent and reliable administration of the phonological subtests.
Click on the Sample tab to read the TAPS-4 Administration Manual Introduction.
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