An investigation into carers' perceptions of the verbal comprehension ability of adults with severe learning disabilities

Summary The present paper reports the findings of a study into care staff perceptions of the language comprehension levels of adults with learning disabilities. Members of staff were asked to estimate their clients' comprehension of sentences at different levels of difficulty and these estimates were compared with actual test results obtained from the clients. Differences between the estimates and the actual scores increased with the difficulty of the sentences. At the highest level of difficulty, staff consistently overestimated the clients' ability, while both under‐ and overestimation occurred at the lower levels. These findings have implications for the care of and acquisition of skills by people with learning disabilities, and for the training of care staff.