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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  • Additional Information
    • Availability:
      American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org
    • Peer Reviewed:
      Y
    • Source:
      19
    • Sponsoring Agency:
      National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
    • Contract Number:
      RO1DC009811
      RO1DC00981103S1
    • Education Level:
      Early Childhood Education
      Elementary Education
      Kindergarten
      Primary Education
    • Subject Terms:
      Morphemes; Grammar; Dialects; African Americans; Black Dialects; Whites; Geographic Regions; Language Impairments; Scoring; Cutting Scores; Comparative Analysis; Classification; Accuracy; Identification; Evaluation Methods; Speech Communication; Kindergarten; Diagnostic Tests; Intelligence Tests; Verbal Ability; Vocabulary; Speech Tests; Articulation (Speech); Nonverbal Ability; Mothers; Age; Educational Attainment; Contrastive Linguistics
    • Subject Terms:
      Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation
    • Accession Number:
      10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00243
    • ISSN:
      1092-4388
    • Abstract:
      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.
    • Abstract:
      As Provided
    • Publication Date:
      2021
    • Accession Number:
      EJ1294091