Complex syntax production of African American preschoolers

We Have to Talk About Something: Why NOT Talk About the Curriculum? A Guide to Embedding Language Interventions in Curricular Content

PURPOSE

Children with developmental language disorder frequently have difficulty with both academic success and language learning and use. This clinical focus article describes core principles derived from a larger program of research (National Science Foundation 1748298) on language intervention combined with science instruction for preschoolers. It serves as an illustration of a model for integrating language intervention with curricular content delivery.

METHOD

We present a five-step model for a speech-language pathologist and other school professionals to follow to (a) understand the grade-level core curriculum objectives; (b) align intervention targets with the curriculum; (c) select a therapy approach that aligns with both goals and curricular content, and (d) methods for implementing the intervention; and (e) verify that both the intervention and the curriculum have been provided in accordance with best practices. We apply this model to the Next Generation Science Standards, a science curriculum popular in the United States, and to grammar and vocabulary interventions, two areas of difficulty for children with developmental language disorders, though it would be possible to extend the steps to other curricular areas and intervention targets.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude by discussing the barriers and benefits to adopting this model. We recognize that both speech-language pathologists and teachers may have limited time to implement language intervention within a general education curriculum, but we suggest that the long-term benefits outweigh the barriers.

Transcription Decisions of Conjoined Independent Clauses Are Equitable Across Dialects but Impact Measurement Outcomes

PURPOSE

Transcription of conjoined independent clauses within language samples varies across professionals. Some transcribe these clauses as two separate utterances, whereas others conjoin them within a single utterance. As an inquiry into equitable practice, we examined rates of conjoined independent clauses produced by children and the impact of separating these clauses within utterances on measures of mean length of utterance (MLU) by a child's English dialect, clinical status, and age.

METHOD

The data were archival and included 246 language samples from children classified by their dialect (African American English or Southern White English) and clinical status (developmental language disorder [DLD] or typically developing [TD]), with those in the TD group further classified by their age (4 years [TD4] or 6 years [TD6]).

RESULTS

Rates of conjoined independent clauses and the impact of these clauses on MLU varied by clinical status (DLD < TD) and age (TD4 < TD6), but not by dialect. Correlations between the rate of conjoined clauses, MLU, and language test scores were also similar across the two dialects.

CONCLUSIONS

Transcription decisions regarding conjoined independent clauses within language samples lead to equitable measurement outcomes across dialects of English. Nevertheless, transcribing conjoined independent clauses as two separate utterances reduces one's ability to detect syntactic differences between children with and without DLD and document syntactic growth as children age.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25822675.

The Growth of Complex Syntax in School-Age African American Children Who Speak African American English

PURPOSE

Syntax provides critical support for both academic success and linguistic growth, yet it has not been a focus of language research in school-age African American children. This study examines complex syntax performance of African American children in second through fifth grades.

METHOD

The current study explores the syntactic performances of African American children (N = 513) in Grades 2-5 on the Test of Language Development-Intermediate who speak African American English. Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate the growth and associated changes between dialect density and syntax. Analyzed data were compared both to the normative sample and within the recruited sample.

RESULTS

The results suggest that dialect density exerted its impact early but did not continue to influence syntactic growth over time. Additionally, it was not until dialect density was accounted for in growth models that African American children's syntactic growth resembled normative expectations of a standardized language instrument.

CONCLUSION

The current study suggests that failure to consider cultural language differences obscures our understanding of African American students' linguistic competence on standardized language assessments.

The Acquisition of Black Language by Spanish-Speaking Preschoolers: A Community-Based Sociolinguistic Approach to Language Assessment

PURPOSE

The purpose of this case series was to demonstrate a community-based sociolinguistic approach to language sample analysis (LSA) for the evaluation of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers acquiring Black language (BL). As part of a comprehensive bilingual speech-language evaluation, we examined sociolinguistic variables in the context of the children's English language samples. Specific emphasis is placed on sociolinguistic information to account for all language(s) and dialect(s) in each child's environment, BL feature patterns, and appropriate scoring procedures for characterizing language use.

METHOD

This case series includes four monolingual English-speaking and four bilingual Spanish-English-speaking 4-year-olds in a linguistically diverse preschool program. Play samples were collected from each child and coded for morphosyntactic features across three categories: BL, Spanish-Influenced English, and shared. Measures derived from the language samples include percent grammatical utterances, mean length of utterance in words, and number of different words. The children's language is characterized within a community-based sociolinguistic approach that combines three culturally responsive methods for assessment found in the speech-language pathology literature in addition to a novel sociolinguistic questionnaire.

RESULTS

We explain how conducting LSA using a community-based sociolinguistic approach yields diagnostically relevant information that is pertinent to conducting a comprehensive and accurate evaluation of preschoolers in linguistically diverse settings without the use of standardized assessments.

CONCLUSION

A community-based sociolinguistic approach to LSA is a useful procedure for mitigating misdiagnosis in preschoolers reared in linguistically diverse environments.

Effects of Specific Language Impairment on a Contrastive Dialect Structure: The Case of Infinitival TO Across Various Nonmainstream Dialects of English

Purpose

Using data from children who spoke various nonmainstream dialects of English and who were classified as either children with specific language impairment (SLI) or typically developing (TD) children, we examined children's marking of infinitival TO by their dialect and clinical status.

Method

The data came from 180 kindergartners (91 speakers of African American English, 60 speakers of Southern White English, 29 speakers of +Cajun); 53 were children with SLI, and 127 were TD children. Data included 4,537 infinitival TO contexts extracted from language samples; each was coded as zero or overtly marked and by preceding verb context (i.e., verbs of motion vs. other).

Results

Across dialects, overall rates of zero marking differed by the children's clinical status (SLI > TD), and other verb contexts accounted for this result. Across the TD and SLI groups, dialect variation was evident for verbs of motion contexts, and the effect was stronger for the TD than for the SLI groups, particularly if the TD children's dialects were classified as +Cajun.

Conclusion

Children's marking of infinitival TO can be affected by both their dialect and clinical status. Results support language assessments that include context-specific rate-based measures of infinitival TO and other contrastive structures when they prove useful for understanding the linguistic profile of SLI within a dialect.

Contribution of parenting to complex syntax development in preschool children with developmental delays or typical development

BACKGROUND

Despite studies of how parent-child interactions relate to early child language development, few have examined the continued contribution of parenting to more complex language skills through the preschool years. The current study explored how positive and negative parenting behaviours relate to growth in complex syntax learning from child age 3 to age 4 years, for children with typical development or developmental delays (DDs).

METHODS

Participants were children with or without DD (N = 60) participating in a longitudinal study of development. Parent-child interactions were transcribed and coded for parenting domains and child language. Multiple regression analyses were used to identify the contribution of parenting to complex syntax growth in children with typical development or DD.

RESULTS

Analyses supported a final model, F(9,50) = 11.90, P < .001, including a significant three-way interaction between positive parenting behaviours, negative parenting behaviours and child delay status. This model explained 68.16% of the variance in children's complex syntax at age 4. Simple two-way interactions indicated differing effects of parenting variables for children with or without DD.

CONCLUSIONS

Results have implications for understanding of complex syntax acquisition in young children, as well as implications for interventions.

Literate Language Intervention With High-Need Prekindergarten Children: A Randomized Trial

PURPOSE

The present article reports on the implementation and results of a randomized intervention trial targeting the literate language skills of prekindergarten children without identified language disorders but with low oral language skills.

METHOD

Children (N = 82; 45 boys and 37 girls) were screened-in and randomized to a business-as-usual control or to the pull-out treatment groups in which they received 4 instructional units addressing different sentence-level syntactic and semantic features: prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, and negations. The intervention was delivered by paraprofessionals in small groups in the form of 20-min lessons 4 times a week for 12 weeks.

RESULTS

Overall, children receiving the supplemental instruction showed educationally meaningful gains in their oral language skills, relative to children in the control group. Significant group differences were found on researcher-designed oral language measures, with moderate to large effect sizes ranging from .44 to .88 on these measures.

CONCLUSIONS

The intervention holds the potential to positively affect understanding and production of syntax and semantic features, such as prepositions and conjunctions, in young children with weak oral language skills.

Development of Auxiliaries in Young Children Learning African American English

Purpose

We examined language samples of young children learning African American English (AAE) to determine if and when their use of auxiliaries shows dialect-universal and dialect-specific effects.

Method

The data were longitudinal language samples obtained from two children, ages 18 to 36 months, and three children, ages 33 to 51 months. Dialect-universal analyses examined age of first form and early uses of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries. Dialect-specific analyses focused on rates of overt marking by auxiliary type and syntactic construction and for BE by surface form and succeeding element.

Results

Initial production of auxiliaries occurred between 19 and 24 months. The children's forms were initially restricted and produced in syntactically simple constructions. Over time, they were expanded in ways that showed their rates of marking to vary by auxiliary type, their rates of BE and DO marking to vary by syntactic construction, and their rates of BE marking to vary by surface form and succeeding element.

Conclusions

Development of auxiliaries by young children learning AAE shows both dialect-universal and dialect-specific effects. The findings are presented within a development chart to guide clinicians in the assessment of children learning AAE and in the treatment of AAE-speaking children with language impairment.

Comparison of African American Children's Performances on a Minimal Competence Core for Morphosyntax and the Index of Productive Syntax

PURPOSE

This study is a response to the need for evidence-based measures of spontaneous oral language to assess African American children under the age of 4 years. We determined if pass/fail status on a minimal competence core for morphosyntax (MCC-MS) was more highly related to scores on the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn)-the measure of convergent criterion validity-than to scores on 3 measures of divergent validity: number of different words (Watkins, Kelly, Harbers, & Hollis, 1995), Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (Shriberg, Austin, Lewis, McSweeney, & Wilson, 1997), and the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Roid & Miller, 1997).

METHOD

Archival language samples for 68 African American 3-year-olds were analyzed to determine MCC-MS pass/fail status and the scores on measures of convergent and divergent validity.

RESULTS

Higher IPSyn scores were observed for 60 children who passed the MCC-MS than for 8 children who did not. A significant positive correlation, rpb = .73, between MCC-MS pass/fail status and IPSyn scores was observed. This coefficient was higher than MCC-MS correlations with measures of divergent validity: rpb = .13 (Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised), rpb = .42 (number of different words in 100 utterances), and rpb = .46 (Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised).

CONCLUSION

The MCC-MS has convergent criterion validity with the IPSyn. Although more research is warranted, both measures can be potentially used in oral language assessments of African American 3-year-olds.

Constructing and Adapting Causal and Formative Measures of Family Settings: The HOME Inventory as Illustration

Measures of the home environment are frequently used in studies of children's development. This review provides information on indices composed of causal and formative indicators (the kind of indicators often used to capture salient aspects of family environments) and to suggest approaches that may be useful in constructing such measures for diverse populations. The HOME Inventory is used to illustrate challenges scholars face in determining what to include in useful measures of family settings. To that end, a cross-cultural review of research on relations among HOME, family context, and child outcomes is presented. The end of the review offers a plan for how best to further research on relations between the home environment and child development for diverse populations.

Extensão média do enunciado-palavras em crianças de 4 e 5 anos com desenvolvimento típico da linguagem

Resumo:OBJETIVO:analisar a Extensão Média do Enunciado-palavras (EME-p) em crianças entre os 4;00 e os 5;05.MÉTODOS:foram observadas 92 crianças portuguesas com desenvolvimento típico: 49 meninas e 43 meninos, divididas em grupos etários com 6 meses de intervalo. Foi recolhida para cada criança uma amostra de 100 enunciados produzidos em discurso espontâneo. Os enunciados foram transcritos e analisados.RESULTADOS:a EME-p variou de 4,5 a 5 palavras, aumentando com a idade. Esta progressão foi verificada anteriormente em crianças falantes de Inglês dos EUA e de Português do Brasil, embora no Português Europeu o número de palavras seja, no geral, um pouco superior. O desempenho de meninos e meninas foi idêntico. A escolaridade dos pais mostrou ter alguma influência, mas não em todos os grupos etários. Os resultados mostraram uma correlação positiva e significante com um teste formal de linguagem, tanto na compreensão, como na expressão.CONCLUSÃO:a EME-p é uma boa medida de desenvolvimento da linguagem até aos 5 anos. Os valores encontrados podem servir como referência normativa relativamente às crianças portuguesas, mas também em estudos comparativos sobre o desenvolvimento da linguagem espontânea.

Zero Marking of Past Tense in Child African American English

Zero marking of the simple past is often listed as a common feature of child African American English (AAE). In the current paper, we review the literature and present new data to help clinicians better understand zero marking of the simple past in child AAE. Specifically, we provide information to support the following statements: (a) By six years of age, the simple past is infrequently zero marked by typically developing AAE-speaking children; (b) There are important differences between the simple past and participle morphemes that affect AAE-speaking children's marking options; and (c) In addition to a verb's grammatical function, its phonetic properties help determine whether an AAE-speaking child will produce a zero marked form.

BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries of 3-year-old African American English speakers

PURPOSE

This study examined African American English-speaking children's use of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries.

METHOD

The data were based on language samples obtained from 48 three-year-olds. Analyses examined rates of marking by auxiliary type, auxiliary surface form, succeeding element, and syntactic construction and by a number of child variables.

RESULTS

The children produced 3 different types of marking (mainstream overt, nonmainstream overt, zero) for auxiliaries, and the distribution of these markings varied by auxiliary type. The children's nonmainstream dialect densities were related to their marking of BE and DO but not modals. Marking of BE was influenced by its surface form and the succeeding verbal element, and marking of BE and DO was influenced by syntactic construction.

CONCLUSIONS

Results extend previous studies by showing dialect-specific effects for children's use of auxiliaries and by showing these effects to vary by auxiliary type and children's nonmainstream dialect densities. Some aspects of the children's auxiliary systems (i.e., pattern of marking across auxiliaries and effects of syntactic construction) were also consistent with what has been documented for children who speak other dialects of English. These findings show dialect-specific and dialect-universal aspects of African American English to be present early in children's acquisition of auxiliaries.

Linguistic constraints on children's overt marking of BE by dialect and age

PURPOSE

Overt marking of BE in nonmainstream adult dialects of English is influenced by a number of linguistic constraints, including the structure's person, number, tense, contractibility, and grammatical function. In the current study, the authors examined the effects of these constraints on overt marking of BE in children as a function of their nonmainstream English dialect and age.

METHOD

The data were language samples from 62 children, ages 4-6 years; 24 children spoke African American English (AAE), and 38 spoke Southern White English (SWE). Analyses included analysis of variance and logistic regression.

RESULTS

Rates of overt marking varied by the children's dialect but not their age. Although the person, number, tense, and grammatical function of BE influenced the children's rates of marking, the nature and magnitude of the influence differed by the children's dialect. For AAE-speaking children, contractibility also influenced their marking of BE.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with the adult literature, the current study showed that AAE- and SWE-speaking children marked BE in ways that differed from each other and from what has been documented for child speakers of Mainstream American English. These findings show stability in the use of BE in AAE and SWE that spans different generations and different dialect communities.

Learning word meanings during reading: effects of phonological and semantic cues on children with language impairment

Phonological and semantic deficits in spoken word learning have been documented in children with language impairment (LI), and cues that address these deficits have been shown to improve their word learning performance. However, the effects of such cues on word learning during reading remain largely unexplored. This study investigated whether (a) control, (b) phonological, (c) semantic, and (d) combined phonological-semantic conditions affected semantic word learning during reading in 9- to 11-year-old children with LI (n = 12) and with typical language (TL, n = 11) from low-income backgrounds. Children were exposed to 20 novel words across these four conditions prior to reading passages containing the novel words. After reading, a dynamic semantic assessment was given, which included oral definitions, contextual clues, and multiple choices. Results indicated that the LI group performed more poorly than the TL group in phonological and combined conditions, but not in the control or semantic conditions. Also, a similar trend for both groups was suggested, with improved performance in the semantic and combined conditions relative to the control and phonological conditions. Clinical implications include a continued need for explicit instruction in semantic properties of novel words to facilitate semantic word learning during reading in children with LI.

Toward validation of a minimal competence core of morphosyntax for African American children

PURPOSE

The authors set out to determine (a) whether African American children's spontaneous spoken language met use criteria for a revised minimal competence core with original and added morphosyntactic patterns at different geographical locations, and (b) whether pass/fail status on this core was differentiated on other criterion measures of language maturity.

METHOD

The authors used a common set of activities and stimuli to elicit spontaneous speech samples from Head Start students, age 3;0 (years; months). The 119 participants were distributed at a northern (Lansing, MI) and a southern (Baton Rouge, LA) location.

RESULTS

More than 80% of the children at each location met criteria for 10 core competencies. They included sentence length, type, complexity, and morphosyntactic elaborations of sentences at the lexical, phrasal, and clausal levels. The 2 most significant predictors of pass/fail outcomes in a regression analysis were (a) clinical referral status and (b) the number of different words (NDW(100)) spoken in a speech sample.

CONCLUSION

A minimal competence core analyses of spontaneous oral language samples may help to identify delayed spoken grammars in African American children.

Index of productive syntax for children who speak African American English

PURPOSE

The validity of the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough, 1990) for children who speak African American English (AAE) was evaluated by conducting an item analysis and a comparison of the children's scores as a function of their maternal education level, nonmainstream dialect density, age, and clinical status.

METHOD

The data were language samples from 62 children; 52 of the children were between the ages of 4 and 6 years and were classified as developing typically, and 10 were 6 years old with specific language impairment (SLI).

RESULTS

All IPSyn items were produced by at least 1 child, and 88% of the items were produced by 50% or more of the children. The children's IPSyn scores were unrelated to maternal education level and dialect density and were visually comparable to IPSyn scores reported for children who speak mainstream English. Nevertheless, IPSyn could not be used to detect differences between the 4- to 6-year-olds based on age, nor could it be used to detect differences between the 6-year-olds with and without SLI.

CONCLUSION

IPSyn is a valid measure for AAE speakers, but it can be insensitive to age and clinical differences between children who are over the age of 48 months.

Language Sample Analysis With Children Who Speak Non-Mainstream Dialects of English

The following article provides an overview of the benefits of using Language Sample Analysis (LSA) for assessing language performance in non-mainstream dialect speakers, addresses the importance of establishing community reference databases for these speakers, and describes a set of strategies that can be useful for developing reference databases in local school districts.

A Review of Developmental and Applied Language Research on African American Children: From a Deficit to Difference Perspective on Dialect Differences

Purpose

The contemporary practices of delivering speech, language, and hearing services in schools reflect palpable gains in professional sensitivity to linguistic and cultural diversity.

Method

This article reviews the dominant research themes on the oral language of African American preschoolers who contribute to such diversity in the United States. Specifically, it contrasts the historical and current frameworks that have guided studies of (a) such children’s acquisition and use of English and (b) the strategies used to assess and modify their language.

Conclusion

Research initiatives that can expand knowledge about this group are proposed.

Cohesive Adequacy in the Narrative Samples of School-Age Children Who Use African American English

Purpose

This study explored the type and adequacy of cohesive devices that are produced by school-age children who use African American English (AAE).

Method

The language samples of 33 African American children, ages 7, 9, and 11 years, were transcribed, analyzed, and coded for AAE use and cohesive adequacy (e.g., personal reference, demonstrative reference, lexical, and conjunctive markers).

Results

There were 2 AAE features that child speakers used for cohesive purposes. Adequacy rates for personal reference cohesive devices were higher than for the other 3 categories. Age was a significant factor in the use and adequacy of cohesive devices.

Conclusion

Typically developing African American children use the same category types of cohesive devices that have been reported for their peers who speak Standard American English. Further examination of cohesive adequacy to identify language impairment in school-age AAE speakers is warranted.

Establishing a pedagogical framework for the multicultural course in communication sciences and disorders

PURPOSE

To provide an overview of a model for teaching a foundational course in multicultural (MC) issues and to demonstrate how it can be modified for use in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) by integrating 3 primary dimensions of cultural competence: awareness, knowledge, and skills.

METHOD

This tutorial begins by establishing the need for a basic foundational course in MC issues for CSD. Next, the authors describe a framework for MC instruction developed in the field of clinical counseling. Finally, the framework is modified and applied to the implementation of an MC course in CSD.

CONCLUSION

The MC course in CSD can provide a useful foundation for facilitating the cultural competence of students in university training programs that have infused MC material across the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's 9 content areas.

Experimental evaluation of a preschool language curriculum: influence on children's expressive language skills

PURPOSE

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate child impacts following implementation of a comprehensive language curriculum, the Language-Focused Curriculum (LFC; Bunce, 1995), within their preschool classrooms. As part of this larger purpose, this study identified child-level predictors of expressive language outcomes for children attending at-risk preschool programs as well as main effects for children's exposure to the language curriculum and its active ingredients-namely, teacher use of language stimulation techniques (LSTs; e.g., open questions, recasts, models).

METHOD

Fourteen preschool teachers were randomly assigned to 2 conditions. Treatment teachers implemented the experimental curriculum for an academic year; a total of 100 children were enrolled in their classrooms. Comparison teachers maintained their prevailing curriculum; a total of 96 children were enrolled in these classrooms. Teachers' fidelity of implementation was monitored using structured observations conducted 3 times during the academic year. Children's growth in expressive language was assessed using measures derived from language samples in the fall and spring, specifically percent complex utterances, rate of noun use, number of different words, and upper bound index.

RESULTS

Children's language skill in the fall, socioeconomic status (household income), and daily attendance served as significant, positive predictors of their language skill in the spring. The impact of the language curriculum and LST exposure was moderated by children's classroom attendance, in that the language curriculum accelerated language growth for children who attended preschool regularly; a similar effect was seen for LST exposure.

CONCLUSIONS

Adoption of a comprehensive language curriculum may provide a value-added benefit only under highly specific circumstances. Findings suggest that at-risk children who receive relatively large doses of a curriculum (as measured in days of attendance during the academic year) that emphasizes quality language instruction may experience accelerated expressive language growth during pre-kindergarten.

Emergence of syntax: commonalities and differences across children

This paper presents the results of a longitudinal examination of syntactic skills, starting at the age of emergence of simple sentences and continuing through the emergence of complex sentences. We ask whether there is systematic variability among children from different socioeconomic backgrounds in the early stages of sentence production. The results suggest a different answer for simple versus complex sentences. We found a striking similarity across SES groups on the measures tapping early mastery of basic syntactic rules of simple sentences. At the same time, there was a significant difference between SES groups in the mastery of complex sentence structures. This difference emerged at the earliest stages of production of multi-clause sentences and persisted throughout the period of observation. The implications of these findings for the understanding of mechanisms of syntactic development are discussed.

Subject relatives by children with and without SLI across different dialects of English

This study examined whether children's use of subject relative clauses differs as a function of their English dialect (African American English, AAE vs. Southern White English, SWE vs. Mainstream American English, MAE) and clinical diagnosis (specific language impairment, SLI vs. typically developing, TD). The data were spontaneous language samples from 87 AAE- and 53 SWE-speaking children, aged 3 to 6 years. Data on MAE came from previously published studies. Results were that the TD child speakers of AAE and SWE presented similar rates and types of subject relative clauses within their samples, but the rates at which they supplied the relative marker within these clauses varied from those that have been reported for TD child speakers of MAE. Nevertheless, across both AAE and SWE, the rates at which the children with SLI produced relative markers within clauses were lower than the rates of their TD peers, and these findings could not be explained by differences in the children's overall rates of non-mainstream English pattern use. These findings are consistent with studies of MAE-speaking children, and they also show across-dialect similarities in the grammatical deficits of children with SLI.

Measuring word learning: dynamic versus static assessment of kindergarten vocabulary

This preliminary study investigated the potential of using a dynamic approach to assessing expressive word mapping. Because measuring word mapping with productive language responses is much more difficult than measuring receptive word mapping, incorporating a dynamic measure allowed us to tap partial mapping and provided useful information on word learning. Participants were 24 typically developing African American children, from high-risk backgrounds and low-risk backgrounds, as determined by school and family demographics. Performance was compared on the PPVT-III and on the dynamic assessment of word mapping. The dynamic assessment of word mapping provided information about complete and partial mapping of words. Additionally, there was an interaction between risk and performance on the vocabulary and word learning measures. These data suggest that the use of the dynamic measure in conjunction with traditional vocabulary measures may have the potential to provide an estimate of word-learning ability.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Readers will (1) be able to identify the need for word-learning measures and (2) become familiar with the combined technique of using dynamic assessment and fast mapping.

African American preschoolers' language, emergent literacy skills, and use of African American English: a complex relation

PURPOSE

This study examined the relation between African American preschoolers' use of African American English (AAE) and their language and emergent literacy skills in an effort to better understand the perplexing and persistent difficulties many African American children experience learning to read proficiently.

METHOD

African American preschoolers' (n = 63) vocabulary skills were assessed in the fall and their language and emergent literacy skills were assessed in the spring. The relation between students' AAE use and their vocabulary and emergent literacy skills was examined using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), controlling for fall vocabulary and other child, family, and school variables. Children's use of AAE was examined across two contexts-sentence imitation and oral narrative using a wordless storybook prompt.

RESULTS

There was a significant -shaped relation between the frequency with which preschoolers used AAE features and their language and emergent literacy skills. Students who used AAE features with greater or lesser frequency demonstrated stronger sentence imitation, letter-word recognition, and phonological awareness skills than did preschoolers who used AAE features with moderate frequency, controlling for fall vocabulary skills. Fewer preschoolers used AAE features during the sentence imitation task with explicit expectations for Standard American English (SAE) or School English than they did during an oral narrative elicitation task with implicit expectations for SAE.

CONCLUSIONS

The nonlinear relation between AAE use and language and emergent literacy skills, coupled with systematic differences in AAE use across contexts, indicates that some preschoolers may be dialect switching between AAE and SAE, suggesting emerging pragmatic/metalinguistic awareness.

Structural Development of the Fictional Narratives of African American Preschoolers

Purpose

This study examined the structural development of African American preschoolers' narratives. It also investigated the effect of background variables (e.g., gender, maternal education, stimulation and responsiveness of the home environment, and whether or not the child lived in poverty) on the children’s narratives.

Method

Sixty-five children completed a story-retelling task at age 4 and again at kindergarten entry. Narratives were then coded for story grammar elements.

Results

Four-year-olds narrated some attempts to solve the problem and some elements of the story ending. At kindergarten entry, children had higher total narrative scores and included more of every type of story grammar element except relationship. Overall, narratives were not related to background variables.

Clinical Implications

The Bus Story Language Test (C. Renfrew, 1991) appears to be an assessment tool that is sensitive to structural growth in African American children’s narratives from 4 years to kindergarten entry.

Sex differences in the activation of language cortex during childhood

Sex differences have been well documented in the behavioral literature but have occurred inconsistently in the neuroimaging literature. This investigation examined the impact of subject age, language task, and cortical region on the occurrence of sex differences in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two hundred and five (104 m, 101 f) right handed, monolingual English speaking children between the ages of 5 and 18 years were enrolled in this study. The study used fMRI at 3T to evaluate BOLD signal variation associated with sex, age, and their interaction. Children completed up to four language tasks, which involved listening to stories, prosody processing, single word vocabulary identification, and verb generation. A sex difference for behavioral performance was found for the prosodic processing task only. Brain activation in the classical left hemisphere language areas of the brain and their right homologues were assessed for sex differences. Although left lateralization was present for both frontal and temporal regions for all but the prosody task, no significant sex differences were found for the degree of lateralization. Sex x age interaction effects were found for all but the task involving single word vocabulary. However effect sizes associated with the sex differences were small, which suggests that relatively large sample sizes would be needed to detect these effects reliably.

Comprehension of third person singular /s/ in AAE-speaking children

PURPOSE

This investigation examined the comprehension of third person singular /s/ in 30 African American English (AAE)-speaking children as a subject-number agreement marker on a comprehension task.

METHOD

A comprehension task was presented to 30 typically developing AAE-speaking children between the ages of 4 and 6. The children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups to hear prerecorded counterbalanced stimuli. The comprehension task was designed to mask plurality of subject; therefore, the children had to focus on the verb as an indicator of subject number.

RESULTS

Repeated measure analysis revealed that AAE-speaking children in this investigation did not understand third person singular /s/ as a number agreement marker. An additional analysis, d' (pronounced "d prime"), indicated that the AAE-speaking children are not sensitive to the third person singular /s/ as a clue to subject number.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

The inclusion of comprehension tasks of third person singular /s/ to help diagnose language impairment in this population may be problematic.

It is not just the poor kids: the use of AAE forms by African-American school-aged children from middle SES communities

This study examined the production of African-American English (AAE) forms produced by 69 school-aged African-American children from middle socio-economic status (SES) communities to determine if age would influence: (a) the number of different types of AAE tokens and (b) the rate of dialect. Descriptive data revealed that there were more than 20 AAE morpho-syntactic forms collectively used by the children. The findings also indicated that factors of age, gender, and sampling context interacted in a variety of ways to influence these children's production of the number of different types of AAE tokens, and the rate of dialect.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Readers should have (1) an increased awareness about the use of AAE forms in school-age children from middle SES homes; (2) a greater understanding of how the production of AAE might be influenced by age, gender, and sampling context.

Methods for characterizing participants' nonmainstream dialect use in child language research

Three different approaches to the characterization of research participants' nonmainstream dialect use can be found in the literature. They include listener judgment ratings, type-based counts of nonmainstream pattern use, and token-based counts. In this paper, we examined these three approaches, as well as shortcuts to these methods, using language samples from 93 children previously described in J. Oetting and J. McDonald (2001). Nonmainstream dialects represented in the samples included rural Louisiana versions of Southern White English (SWE) and Southern African American English (SAAE). Depending on the method and shortcut used, correct dialect classifications (SWE or SAAE) were made for 88% to 97% of the participants; however, regression algorithms had to be applied to the type- and token-based results to achieve these outcomes. For characterizing the rate at which the participants produced the nonmainstream patterns, the token-based methods were found to be superior to the others, but estimates from all approaches were moderately to highly correlated with each other. When type- and/or token-based methods were used to characterize participants' dialect type and rate, the number of patterns included in the analyses could be substantially reduced without significantly affecting the validity of the outcomes. These findings have important implications for future child language studies that are done within the context of dialect diversity.