SLAM for language assessment

Which picture set should I use?

The sets have overlapping age recommendations. These examples use the age guidance in the May 2026 scoring document:

These are material-selection recommendations, not normative age bands. Preview the pictures and questions to consider the situation depicted and the language demands. For example, the Dog Comes Home analysis sheet identifies opportunities for causal explanations, perspective-taking, and persuasion within one story.

The individual set pages also link translated questions. Available languages differ by set; Dog Comes Home and Bunny Goes to School have multiple translations.

What is specific about administering SLAM?

SLAM combines arranging pictures, telling the story, and answering questions about it. Before administering a set, review its pictures, questions, and analysis guidance so you know which details you may need to draw the child’s attention to.

Help with picture order when needed. The sequencing activity establishes the story the child will talk about; sequencing accuracy is not the language target. The SLAM scoring guidance explicitly permits helping a child who puts the pictures in the wrong order.

Elicit the story before the follow-up questions. In Dog Comes Home, the child arranges the pictures, tells the story, and then answers the set’s questions. This provides a narrative before the questions direct attention to particular motives, causes, and possible actions. Use the sequence specified for the chosen set.

Prompts can direct attention without supplying an answer. The Dog Comes Home analysis sheet identifies pictures to highlight for particular questions and allows prompts that encourage the child to reconsider a response. Note both the response and the support provided so you can distinguish an independent explanation from one produced after prompting.

Complete the task rather than collecting a fixed utterance count. SLAM’s analysis is organized around the story and its questions. The response sheets provide space for examples and observations; a full transcript is needed only if required by an additional analysis you plan to conduct.

How are responses scored?

The scoring guidance uses a 0–2 scale with half-point increments, reflecting how responsive and complete an answer is. The set-specific analysis sheet explains what to look for in each response.

The totals have set-specific interpretive bands indicating likely typical performance, a need for further probing, or a likely need for support. SLAM does not provide normative scores; these bands are developer guidance rather than age-normed standard scores or percentiles.

Use the response notes alongside the total. Two children can arrive at a similar total through different patterns—for example, incomplete causal explanations versus difficulty accounting for a character’s perspective. Those patterns lead to different follow-up questions.

How can SLAM help identify treatment or IEP goals?

The analysis sheets connect individual questions with the language and reasoning involved. That gives you a way to move from a response to a possible target area:

These are examples of how response patterns can inform target selection, not a separate SLAM scoring rubric. Follow-up probes can help distinguish difficulty understanding the relationship from difficulty expressing it.

For instance, Dog Comes Home includes both questions about a character’s reasons and a question about what the child would say in that character’s position. The accompanying sheet identifies causal language and persuasive language as opportunities to examine. That is more specific for planning intervention than treating the result as a general difficulty with storytelling. Dog Comes Home analysis sheet

What additional analyses can I use with the sample?

SLAM’s response scoring can be complemented by analysis of the language used to tell the story and answer the questions. For example, SALT can summarize grammatical errors, utterance length, and vocabulary from a transcript prepared with its conventions. These analyses add information about linguistic form alongside SLAM’s examination of explanations and inferences.

Potratz and colleagues provide a published example of using SLAM materials with SALT transcription conventions to calculate language measures. Using SALT this way does not make the sample eligible for SALT’s normative comparisons; those require the corresponding collection procedure.

Similarly, reaching 50 utterances does not make a SLAM narrative suitable for comparison with SUGAR’s norms, which are based on conversational elicitation. When adding an analysis, follow its transcription and counting rules and distinguish descriptive results from normative comparisons.

Useful SLAM materials

• SLAM card sets: picture materials, set-specific questions, translations, and links to the virtual version and video tutorial.
• Guidelines for Analysis: individual response sheets describing what each question examines, with space for scoring and observations.
• Scoring parameters: response scale, suggested age coverage, set-specific interpretive bands, and guidance on sequencing assistance.