Understanding the PPS scale: A comprehensive guide for clinicians
Summary
The PLS-5 (Preschool Language Scales, Fifth Edition) is the most frequently used standardized PLS assessment tool for evaluating language skills in children from birth through 7 years, 11 months, making it essential for early identification of language disorders.
The PLS-5 assesses auditory comprehension and expressive communication across multiple domains: attention, gesture, play, vocal development, social communication, vocabulary, concepts, language structure, integrative language, and emergent literacy.
The PLS-5 age range spans from birth to 7 years, 11 months, with play-based materials for younger children and picture-based tasks for older children, plus optional supplemental measures including an Articulation Screener and Language Sample Checklist.
For those wondering how to administer the PLS-5, it involves approximately 45-60 minutes using manipulatives and a picture manual, with age-appropriate starting points, basal requirements, and ceiling rules to ensure accurate assessment of both language domains.
Standard scores range from 85-115 (average), with scores below 85 indicating potential language disorders rated as mild, moderate, or severe, though clinicians should use caution when interpreting Auditory Comprehension scores for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
The Preschool Language Scales, Fifth Edition (PLS-5) is the most frequently used standardized test to assess language skills in early education settings.
Strong language and literacy skills have a sizable impact on cognitive, educational, and psychological outcomes.
This includes peer and personal relationships, social skills, vocational attainment, and many aspects of life satisfaction.
Therefore, accurate assessment of language skills during the preschool years is essential. In many cases, this means using the PLS-5.
What does the PLS-5 assess?
The PLS-5 is a standardized play-based assessment that evaluates a young child’s language skills and identifies language disorders.
The Preschool Language Scales, Fifth Edition assesses children’s language capabilities all the way from pre-verbal skills and interaction-based skills to emerging language and early literacy skills.
The test manual states that the assessment can only be administered by trained professionals including speech-language pathologists (SLPs), early childhood specialists, and psychologists.
The benefits of using the updated PLS-5 as compared with earlier editions include:
Addressing a wider variety of early play behaviors
Eliciting target responses with ease due to test item modifications
Minimizing transitions between the play and picture pointing tasks, as test items with manipulatives are grouped to streamline administration
Engaging children easily with the new picture manual featuring large, colorful illustrations
Targeting multiple phonemes within words using the brief Articulation Screener, which now includes picture stimuli
Tracking progress using Growth Scores to monitor a child’s skills from birth through age 7:11
What is the PLS-5 age range?
The PLS-5 is designed to assess receptive and expressive language skills in children from birth through 7 years, 11 months. Because the PLS-5 age range begins at birth, it is an appropriate assessment for children who are not yet speaking.
Specifically, the PLS-5 assesses the areas of attention, gesture, play, vocal development, social communication, vocabulary, concepts, language structure, integrative language, and emergent literacy.
The Preschool Language Scales, Fifth Edition allows an SLP to determine eligibility for services in the areas of expressive communication, receptive communication, or mixed.
The first section of the PLS-5 engages the child with play-based materials, making the assessment ideal for younger children with lower-level language skills who may have difficulty with more formal assessments.
A Spanish version of the test is also available.
The testing focuses on two scales of language as well as supplemental measures:
Auditory Comprehension: This section evaluates listening and auditory comprehension abilities of vocabulary, basic concepts, grammatical markers, comparisons, inferencing, and emergent literacy.
Expressive Communication: This section evaluates expressive language abilities of naming, describing, basic concepts, grammatical markers, sentence structure, and emergent literacy.
Three optional supplemental measures are also included: Language Sample Checklist, Articulation Screener, and Home Communication Questionnaire.
How to administer the PLS-5
For those curious about how to administer the PLS-5 and PLS-5 protocols, it takes approximately 45-60 minutes.
Materials include a box of manipulatives, a scoring manual, a record form, and a picture manual.
As always, the SLP should ensure the testing environment is quiet and conducive to listening with ease.
The starting point for both sections depends on the age of the child. Initially, the child must meet an age-based basal—or achieve a pre-set number of test items correct—before moving on to the rest of the assessment.
If a child does not meet this basal, the test administrator must return to the previous starting point for the next younger age and begin there until the basal is met.
SLPs should also be aware that the assessment has a ceiling—or a pre-determined number of incorrect test items required before ending each section of the test.
For the Auditory Comprehension section, the manipulatives provided with the assessment are used to determine the child’s ability to follow directions. The SLP reads the prompts aloud and marks the child’s response as either correct or incorrect on the designated line—typically a check mark indicates correct, and an “X” indicates incorrect.
For the Expressive Communication section, the picture manual is needed but manipulatives are not necessary. This section assesses the child’s ability to respond verbally. The child’s responses will be marked in the same manner as in the Auditory Comprehension section.
Throughout the test, the child will respond by pointing or verbally responding to pictures and objects.
PLS-5 protocols and score calculations
Once the entire assessment has been administered, norm-referenced scores are provided.
Raw scores for the Auditory Comprehension and Expressive Communication sections can be calculated individually using the final test item administered and total number of incorrect responses for each section.
Using the raw scores, SLPs can use the scoring manual to calculate a standard score and percentile rank for both sections of the test.
From these values, you can derive the Total Language Standard Score, indicating the child’s overall language ability—this score correlates to a language disorder rating of mild, moderate, or severe.
Standard scores for the PLS-5 are based on a bell curve where a score of 100 is the mean with a standard deviation of 15. Therefore, scores between 85 and 115 are considered average.
SLPs seeking further data can also calculate the Discrepancy Comparison. This score provides a qualitative assessment of whether there is a significant discrepancy between receptive and expressive language abilities.
In a 2021 research analysis of the PLS-5 and whether it produces reliable scores, researchers noted that SLPs should be cautious when interpreting the Auditory Comprehension score of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
Perhaps another assessment of auditory comprehension can confirm a difficulty in this area for those children who fall into this category.
What are preschool language scales?
The PLS-5 focuses on gathering data in two areas of language, expressive and receptive communication, which correlate to the two preschool language scales: the Expressive Communication Scale and Auditory Comprehension Scale.
Together, scores from these two scales help to determine a child’s ability to communicate through both verbal expression and comprehension of spoken language.
ASHA provides detailed communication milestones based on age, but here are general signs that a child may have a language disorder and requires further assessment, such as the PLS-5:
Does not smile or interact with others (birth and older)
Does not babble (4–6 months)
Makes only a few sounds or gestures (7–9 months)
Does not understand what others say (10 months – 2 years)
Says only a few words (19 months – 2 years)
Does not put words together to make sentences (19 months – 3 years)
Speaks using words that are not easily understood by others (3–4 years)
Has trouble with early reading skills, like pretending to read or finding the front of a book (4–5 years)
Clinical applications for private practice
For SLPs, mental health therapists, and clinicians in private practice, the PLS-5 offers several advantages:
Comprehensive evaluation: The PLS assessment covers multiple language domains in a single administration, providing efficient, thorough evaluation.
Progress monitoring: Growth Scores allow tracking of development over time, useful for documenting treatment effectiveness.
Eligibility determination: Standard scores and severity ratings support qualification for services and insurance authorization.
Treatment planning: Detailed item analysis reveals specific areas of strength and weakness to guide intervention goals.
Parent communication: Percentile ranks and severity ratings help explain results to families in understandable terms.
Bilingual options: The Spanish version enables assessment of children from Spanish-speaking homes.
The takeaway
The PLS-5 is an ideal assessment for evaluating receptive and expressive language in young children. Manipulatives and colorful pictures maintain their interest and enhance ease of administration.
When administered in its entirety, the PLS-5 paints a comprehensive picture of how well a child communicates, both expressively and through comprehension of spoken language.
Mastery of PLS-5 administration and interpretation is essential for providing high-quality, evidence-based language assessment services to young children and their families.
Sources
ASHA, Communication Milestones: Age Ranges. (2024)./
Global Speech Therapy, Giving the Preschool Language Scales- 5th Edition (PLS-5). (2024).
Hsiao, Yu-Yu, et al. (2021). The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Hierarchy and Reliability of the Preschool Language Scales–Fifth Edition: Mokken Scale Analysis.
Pearson Assessments, Preschool Language Scales 5th Edition. (2024).
Test Review: PLS-5 English. (2013).
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