Prior research indicates that language-handicapped children obtain higher test scores when tested by personally familiar examiners than when tested by personally unfamiliar examiners. The present investigation inquired whether this finding is due to examinees' actual differential performance across the two examiner conditions, or whether it is the result of testers' biased scoring of similar examinee performances. To make this determination, videotaped testing sessions, in which language-handicapped preschoolers were awarded higher scores by familiar examiners than by unfamiliar examiners, were shown to two certified speech clinicians who were blind to all purposes of the study. These individuals rated each examinee's performance in the familiar and unfamiliar examiner condition. Results indicated that the videotape raters, as the examiners, gave higher scores to examinees' performance in the familiar condition, corroborating the notion that language-impaired children actually perform more strongly with a familiar examiner. (Author)