The Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) was designed to predict a student's likelihood of success and ease in learning a foreign language. It is published by the Language Learning and Testing Foundation. The Modern Language Aptitude Test was developed to measure foreign language learning aptitude. Language learning aptitude does not refer to whether or not an individual can or cannot learn a foreign language (it is assumed that virtually everyone can learn a foreign language given adequate opportunity). According to John Carroll and Stanley Sapon, the authors of the MLAT, language learning aptitude refers to the "prediction of how well, relative to other individuals, an individual can learn a foreign language in a given amount of time and under given conditions". The MLAT has primarily been used for adults in government language programs and missionaries, but it is also appropriate for students in grades 9 to 12 as well as college/university students so it is also used by private schools and school and clinical psychologists. Similar tests have been created for younger age groups. For example, the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery was designed for junior high and high school students while the MLAT-E is for children in grades 3 through 6. Development John B. Carroll and Stanley Sapon are responsible for the development of the MLAT. They designed the test as part of a five-year research study at Harvard University between 1953 and 1958. One initial purpose of developing the Modern Language Aptitude Test was to help the US Government find and train people who would be successful learners of a foreign language in an intensive program of instruction. After field testing many different kinds of verbal tasks, Carroll chose five tasks that he felt worked well as a combination in predicting foreign language learning success in a variety of contexts. These tasks were minimally correlated with one another, but used together they had demonstrated high predictive validity with respect to such criteria as language proficiency ratings and grades in foreign language classes. The design of the MLAT also reflects a major conclusion of Carroll's research, which was that language learning aptitude was not a "general" unitary ability, but rather a composite of at least four relatively independent "specialized" abilities. The four aspects, or "components", of language learning aptitude that Carroll identified were phonetic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, rote learning ability and inductive language learning ability. In the article "The