Rates of auxiliary<i>is</i>and<i>are</i>in African American English speaking children with specific language impairment following language treatment

Smith, Shana L.; Bellon-Harn, Monica L.

doi:10.3109/02699206.2014.966394

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…This linguistic information is important to understand so that dialect effects can be incorporated into assessment and treatment expectations. Indeed, in at least one treatment study of AAE-speaking children with SLI, dialectspecific language growth was evident (Smith & Bellon-Harn, 2015). Before treatment, the children, aged 4-5 years, produced 160 predicates that could support is or are, and their percentages of overt marking were 6% and 7%, respectively.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Oetting

Berry

Gregory

et al. 2019

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose In African American English and Southern White English, we examined whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) overtly mark tense and agreement structures at lower percentages than typically developing (TD) controls, while also examining the effects of dialect, structure, and scoring approach. Method One hundred six kindergartners completed 4 dialect-informed probes targeting 8 tense and agreement structures. The 3 scoring approaches varied in the treatment of nonmainstream English forms and responses coded as Other (i.e., those not obligating the target structure). The unmodified approach counted as correct only mainstream overt forms out of all responses, the modified approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms and zero forms out of all responses, and the strategic approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms out of all responses except those coded as Other. Results With the probes combined and separated, the unmodified and strategic scoring approaches showed lower percentages of overt marking by the SLI groups than by the TD groups; this was not always the case for the modified scoring approach. With strategic scoring and dialect-specific cut scores, classification accuracy (SLI vs. TD) was highest for the 8 individual structures considered together, the past tense probe, and the past tense probe irregular items. Dialect and structure effects and dialect differences in classification accuracy also existed. Conclusions African American English– and Southern White English–speaking kindergartners with SLI overtly mark tense and agreement at lower percentages than same dialect–speaking TD controls. Strategic scoring of dialect-informed probes targeting tense and agreement should be pursued in research and clinical practice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Oetting

Berry

Gregory

et al. 2019

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…Because of these same characteristics, which coincidentally also resemble the speech of children with SLI (Smith 2015), currently known as Developmental Language Delay, children speaking AAE have often been referred to a speech language pathologist. This unsubstantiated tendency to consider or even clinically evaluate AAE-speaking children's language as being at risk for a language disorder, or presenting characteristics that resemble a language disability, may be stemming from the fact that test norms and baseline information used by professionals (SLPs, teachers, psychologists) are typically obtained by children from "White middle-class MAEspeaking backgrounds" or comparative studies of "African American and White children" (Wyatt 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic illusions and misconceptions: The role of language variation in language development across three varieties of American English

Christodoulou

Tsimpli²

2023

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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Prior research on the linguistic abilities of Southern English- (SE) and African-American English-speaking children (SAAE) revealed unexpectedly high rates of risk for a language disorder (Christodoulou & Tsimpli 2021; Moland & Oetting 2021). This study examines the performance of 139 SE-, 46 SAAE-, and 35 Mainstream American English-speaking children (MAE), aged 2-13, and analyzes their performance, through twelve sections, in four key linguistic domains: syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology, using a standardized assessment test. Results revealed a parallel performance across the three groups in all linguistic domains. The highest means of accuracy were noted with phonology and the lowest with semantics. Analysis of the participants’ performance by age evidenced a virtually identical performance across the three groups after age 6 or 7, but considerable variations were noted with younger children. Results from the current study contradict results from previous work showing considerably high rates of risk for a language disorder for the SAAE-speaking children, as their performance is parallel to not only that of SE-speaking children but it also the performance of MAE-speaking children. Results from the current study could help guide educational policies, especially for early education programs, as well as diagnostic assessment and rehabilitation.

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“…Previous SLI studies using a disorder within dialects framework have revealed three important findings regarding the marking of T/A in AAE and SWE: (a) Children with and without SLI express T/A using a large and diverse inventory of mainstream overt forms (e.g., cried, saw, fell), nonmainstream overt forms (e.g., had cried, had cry, kickeded, seen, falled, verbal -s with first-and second-person subjects), and nonmainstream zero forms (e.g., cryØ, seeØ, fallØ); (b) the relative frequencies at which these various forms are produced vary by a child's dialect (AAE vs. SWE) and T/A structure (e.g., past tense vs. verbal -s) 1 ; and (c) AAE-and SWE-speaking children with SLI often produce lower percentages of mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms and higher percentages of nonmainstream zero forms than same dialect-speaking TD controls (for a review of language sample studies, see Oetting, 2019; see also Hendricks & Adlof, 2020;Smith & Bellon-Harn, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Marking of Tense and Agreement in Language Samples by Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Evaluation of Scoring Approaches and Cut Scores Across Structures

Oetting

Rivière

Berry

et al. 2021

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose As follow-up to a previous study of probes, we evaluated the marking of tense and agreement (T/A) in language samples by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) while also examining the clinical utility of different scoring approaches and cut scores across structures. Method The samples came from 70 AAE- and 36 SWE-speaking kindergartners, evenly divided between the SLI and typically developing groups. The structures were past tense, verbal – s, auxiliary BE present, and auxiliary BE past. The scoring approaches were unmodified, modified, and strategic; these approaches varied in the scoring of forms classified as nonmainstream and other. The cut scores were dialect-universal and dialect-specific. Results Although low numbers of some forms limited the analyses, the results generally supported those previously found for the probes. The children produced a large and diverse inventory of mainstream and nonmainstream T/A forms within the samples; strategic scoring led to the greatest differences between the clinical groups while reducing effects of the children's dialects; and dialect-specific cut scores resulted in better clinical classification accuracies, with measures of past tense leading to the highest levels of classification accuracy. Conclusions For children with SLI, the findings contribute to studies that call for a paradigm shift in how children's T/A deficits are assessed and treated across dialects. A comparison of findings from the samples and probes indicates that probes may be the better task for identifying T/A deficits in children with SLI in AAE and SWE. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13564709

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Rates of auxiliaryisandarein African American English speaking children with specific language impairment following language treatment

Cited by 9 publications

References 28 publications

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Linguistic illusions and misconceptions: The role of language variation in language development across three varieties of American English

Marking of Tense and Agreement in Language Samples by Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Evaluation of Scoring Approaches and Cut Scores Across Structures

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