| Abstract: | A model is presented for the integration of clinical-inferential and quantitative approaches to classification. In this, the first application of the proposed model, preschool children with developmental language disorders were classified on the basis of clinical interpretations of performance on psychometric subtests. Five hypothesized subgroups were validated on the basis of (a) consensus among five clinical neuropsychologists, (b) language pathologists' reports, (c) comparisons with subgroups defined by a cluster analytic approach, and (d) comparisons among subgroups on variables not used for classification. Results are discussed in terms of the feasibility of the integrated approach, commonalities with other typologies, and the implications of this work to issues of subtype stability, remediation, predictions of later reading achievement, brain-behavior relationships, and generalizability to other clinical groups. |
