Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L. S., & Power, M. H. (1987). Effects of examiner familiarity on LD and MR students’ language performance . Remedial and Special Education , 8 (4), 47–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258700800407

Students were assessed twice during a period of 3 weeks, once by a familiar and once by an unfamiliar tester, within a crossover design. Students were assessed by either two graduate or two undergraduate female students enrolled in degree programs in communication disorders.

Participants included 16 students with disabilities of low socioeconomic status (8 with learning disabilities and 8 with intellectual disabilities). In each group, there were five boys and three girls.

The Clinical Evaluation of Language Functions (CELF) was used to measure receptive and expressive language skills in the areas phonology, syntax, semantics, memory, and word-finding/ retrieval. Outer directedness, as operationalized in terms of the frequency and duration of subjects' glancing behavior, was also measured.

Students with LD performed significantly and dramatically better with familiar, rather than unfamiliar, examiners. Students with MR scored similarly in the two examiner conditions. Students with MR glanced more often and for a longer duration than students with LD. Students with LD regarded familiar examiners more frequently and longer than unfamiliar examiners, whereas children with MR did not exhibit such a difference.