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What's New in SALT 20?

Analyze and Database menus are organized into language domains: macro analysis, syntax/morphology, semantics, discourse, verbal facility, and errors. This organization, which corresponds to the organization of the Standard Measures Report, facilitates locating additional, more detailed information in areas of interest.

YouTube video - New features in SALT 20

New reports

  • Quick Look report provides a visual display of strengths and weaknesses.
  • Nonmainstream Forms report summarizes any nonmainstream-form codes found in the transcript.

New report organization
The reports have been re-organized by language domain. There is a summary report for each domain with additional domain-specific reports for most categories. For example, the Verbal Facility Summary contains details about rate, pauses, mazes, and abandoned utterances. The Maze Distribution Tables provide even more details related to mazes.

Measures in the database reports may be compared to all age or grade-matched peers, or to the subset of database samples equated by length.

New variables

  • Standard Measures Report
    • % Utts with Nonmainstream Forms
    • % Utts with Fluency Codes
  • Standard Utterance Lists
    • Utterances with Fluency Codes
    • Utterances with Nonmainstream-form Codes
  • Syntax/Morphology
    • % Utterances with Verbs
    • List of Bound Morphemes Used (included in summary report)
  • Semantics
    • Moving-Average NDW
  • Verbal Fluency
    • Total Maze Components
    • Maze Components as % of Total Components
    • % Abandoned Uttterances
    • % Utts with Fluency Codes
    • Number of Utts with Fluency Codes
  • Errors
    • List of Error Codes (included in summary report)

New reference database
TNL2 Narrative Samples – 778 children, ranging in age from 4;0 to 14;11, in grades PK, K, 1-8. These samples were collected for the standardization of the Test of Narrative Language - Second Edition (Gillam & Pearson, 2017).

Additional database samples
Additional FWAY samples added to the Narrative Story Retell database.

Expanded transcription conventions
@begin/@end sets now allowed throughout your transcript to easily select multiple sections for analysis.

SALT Reference Book included as part of the software
The SALT Reference Book provides the conceptual background of language sample analysis, practical guidelines for using SALT, and extensive appendices for quick reference to all the database protocols, transcription conventions, special coding, and more. A PDF copy of this book is now included as part of the software (accessible from the Help menu).

Normative graph and resources added as PDFs to the Help menu

  • Move than 50 normative graphs, generated from the SALT reference databases.
    • by age and grade
    • by context (play, conversation, narative, expository, persuasion)
    • selected language measures (MLUw, % mazes, WPM, NSS, SI, and more)
    • English-fluent, bilingual Spanish/English, monolingual Spanish
  • Additional resource guides
    • Using SALT to Assess Errors
    • Using SALT to Assess Fluency
    • Using SALT to Assess Nonmainstream Forms

Research Version only

  • Updated the Rectangular Data File utility to include the new variables and to reflect the new menu and report organization.
  • Added default fluency codes and nonmainstream-form codes when building databases - used for comparison.