DIAL 3

The Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning (DIAL 3) is a early childhood developmental screener for children 3 to 6 years and 11 months and the exam is timed for 20 - 30 minutes.

The DIAL 3 provides scores for Motor, Concepts, Language, totals an overall composite, and indicates behavioral observation cutoffs. It also provides standardized scores for Self-Help and Social Development assessed by a Parent Questionnaire.

DIAL 3 Measures 5 Areas

Motor Area: Gross Motor items include catching, jumping, hopping, and skipping. Fine Motor items include building with blocks, cutting, copying shape items include catching, jumping, hopping and skipping. Fine Motor items include building with blocks, cutting, copying shapes and letters and writing and the popular finger-touching task from the DIAL-R.

Concepts Area: Items include pointing to named body parts, naming or identifying colors, rote counting, counting blocks, placing a block in named positions relative to a little house, identifying concepts in a triad of pictures, and sorting shapes. The DIAL 3 includes an item that assesses automatic naming of colors. This skill has been shown to be associated with potential learning disabilities.

Language Area: Items include answering simple personal questions (name, age, sex), articulation, naming (expressive) or identifying (receptive) objects and actions plus phonemic awareness tasks such as rhyming and I Spy.

Self-Help Development: Looks at the child's development of personal care skills related to dressing, eating and grooming.

Social Development: Looks at the child's development of social skills with other children and parents, including rule compliance, sharing, self control and empathy.

DIAL 3 Testing Information

The DIAL 3 provides a positive and non threatening environment essential to effective early screening. Children complete fun age appropriate tasks using bright and appealing child-friendly materials. Stimuli are presented one at a time using a dial, manipulatives or other materials. The DIAL 3 uses the same popular station format as the DIAL-R.

The DIAL 3 provides standard deviation and percentile cutoffs points by chronological age at two-month intervals for total and area scores. Percentile ranks and standard scores are also provided.

Speed DIAL is a shortened version of the DIAL 3 and includes 10 items from the 3 childhood areas (Motor, Language and Concepts). It takes only 15 minutes to administer and yields an overall total score. This screener has high reliability and a high correlation with the DIAL 3 Total Score enabling the administrator to determine whether the child will require further assessment.