ABSTRACT
Precedents and objectives: Dr Donna Jackson-Maldonado, researcher and professor at the Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios of the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro in Mexico, left us on November 30, 2021. In this article, we review her main scientific contributions related to the three fundamental axes on which she worked: language acquisition, language disorders and language assessment. Methods and results: Dr Jackson-Maldonado's studies on language acquisition included groups of premature babies, late talkers, and typical development children in bilingual and diverse socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, she studied atypical language development in children with hearing loss, children with developmental language disorders and children with Down syndrome and other syndromes. Finally, regarding language assessment, it should be noted that she led the Mexican Spanish version of the Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) that was used as a model for later adaptations in other Romance languages. Discussion and conclusion: Dr Jackson-Maldonado's methodological approach combined rigour with a creative and innovative scientific spirit, yet she integrated theory and clinical practice from its very beginning. She left us an immense research and personal legacy that we want to honour in this paper.
Antecedentes y objetivos: La Dra. Donna Jackson-Maldonado, investigadora y profesora del Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios de la Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro en México, nos dejó el 30 de noviembre de 2021. En este artículo repasamos sus principales aportaciones científicas relacionadas con los tres ejes fundamentales sobre los que trabajó: la adquisición del lenguaje, los trastornos del lenguaje y la evaluación del lenguaje. Método y resultados: Las investigaciones de la Dra. Jackson sobre la adquisición del lenguaje incluyeron grupos de bebés prematuros, hablantes tardíos y niños de desarrollo típico en condiciones socioeconómicas bilingües y diversas. Además, estudió el desarrollo atípico del lenguaje en niños con pérdida auditiva, con trastornos del desarrollo del lenguaje y con síndrome de Down, así como otros síndromes. Finalmente, en cuanto a la evaluación lingüística, cabe destacar que lideró la versión en español mexicano de los Inventarios de Desarrollo Comunicativo (CDI) que sirvió de modelo para posteriores adaptaciones en otras lenguas romances. Discusión y conclusiones: El enfoque metodológico de la Dra. Jackson combinó el rigor con un espíritu científico creativo e innovador, además, integró la teoría y la práctica clínica desde sus inicios. Nos dejó un inmenso legado personal e investigador que queremos honrar en este trabajo.(AU)
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Female , Language Development , Language Disorders , Speech , Speech, Language and Hearing SciencesABSTRACT
Introduction: Mazes are linguistic disfluencies such as filled pauses, repetitions, or revisions of grammatical, phonological, or lexical aspects of words that do not contribute to the meaning of a sentence. Bilingual children are believed to increase the numbers of mazes in their native or heritage language, the minority language, as they become more proficient in the second language, the societal language. Mazes may increase over time in bilingual Spanish-speaking children as they become more proficient in English, the societal language in the United States. However, current studies have not been conducted longitudinally. Higher rates of mazes in the heritage language over time may be due to changes in language proficiency and differences in processing demands in the children as they use more complex language. Moreover, children with developmental language disorder (DLD) can also present higher rates of mazes than children with typical language. Heritage speakers, therefore, are at risk of being misdiagnosed with DLD due to high rates of mazes. Currently, we do not understand what the typical rates of mazes are as heritage speakers get older and become more proficient in the societal language. The current study examined the type and frequency of Spanish mazes longitudinally in a group of 22 Spanish heritage speakers with and without DLD and determined the changes over time. Methods: A total of 11 children with typical language development (TLD) and 11 with DLD participated in this 5-year longitudinal study. Using a wordless picture book, children completed a retelling task in Spanish during the spring of each academic year (PK to 3rd grade) as part of a 5-h testing battery. Narratives were transcribed and coded for types of mazes (filled pauses, repetitions, grammatical revisions, phonological revisions, and lexical revisions). Results and conclusion: The results of the study indicate that TLD children increased their overall percentage of mazed words and utterances. The opposite pattern was observed in the DLD group, which decreased their percentage of mazed words and utterances. In contrast, both groups demonstrated a decrease in repetitions in first grade and an increase in third grade. Additionally, the TLD and DLD children decreased in the percentage of fillers in first grade and then increased in the third grade. Results suggest that maze use is quite variable in heritage speakers and does not necessarily differentiate groups. Clinicians should not rely solely on mazes to determine ability status. In fact, high use of mazes can reflect typical language development.
ABSTRACT
This study examines bilingual effects in Spanish-English bilingual children with good maintenance of the minority language. The present study compares the performance of a group of Spanish-monolingual children (MON; n=30) with two groups of Spanish-speaking bilingual children (Low English proficiency group: LEP; n=36; High English proficiency group, HEP; n=36) on the elicited productions of Spanish articles and object clitics. Our results suggest that children with LEP performed significantly lower than MON children of the same age on both articles and clitics in Spanish. However, children with HEP, who were a year older on average, performed similarly to the MON group. Both groups of bilingual children produced errors of clitic omission and substitution, but these errors were minimal in the MON group. The results suggest that Spanish clitics and articles are vulnerable to bilingual effects for English/Spanish speaking children with good Spanish maintenance.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the performance of a group of Spanish-speaking, dual language learners (DLLs) who were attending English-only schools and came from low-income and low-parental education backgrounds on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition, Spanish (CELF-4S; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2006). Method: Spanish-speaking DLLs (N = 656), ages 5;0 (years;months) to 7;11, were tested for language impairment (LI) using the core language score of the CELF-4S and the English Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test (Dawson, Stout, & Eyer, 2003). A subsample (n = 299) was additionally tested using a Spanish language sample analysis and a newly developed Spanish morphosyntactic measure, for identification of children with LI and to conduct a receiver operating characteristics curve analysis. Results: Over 50% of the sample scored more than 1 SD below the mean on the core language score. In our subsample, the sensitivity of the CELF-4S was 94%, and specificity was 65%, using a cutoff score of 85 as suggested in the manual. Using an empirically derived cutoff score of 78, the sensitivity was 86%, and the specificity was 80%. Conclusions: Results suggest that the CELF-4S overidentifies low-income Spanish-English DLLs attending English-only schools as presenting with LI. For this sample, 1 in every 3 Latino children from low socioeconomic status was incorrectly identified with LI. Clinicians should be cautious when using the CELF-4S to evaluate low-income Spanish-English DLLs and ensure that they have converging evidence before making diagnostic decisions.
