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.

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.

Effect of augmented sensorimotor input on learning verbal and nonverbal tasks among children with autism spectrum disorders.

Thirty-four children, with autism spectrum disorders, ages 4-14 years, were matched and randomly assigned to one of two conditions for learning a novel juice-making task and producing two novel words about the event. Seventeen sighted children were manually guided to perform the task and tactually prompted during imitated productions of novel words for the event. Their matched controls heard the novel words and watched the juice-making task being performed. Performances on four verbal and two nonverbal measures right after instruction and at 24-48 h post-instruction, revealed higher scores for the ''hands-on'', participation than observation group on both verbal and nonverbal tasks. This study offers a paradigm for exploring the instructional advantage of enhanced participatory experience.

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.

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.

Cross-dialectal perceptual experiences of speech-language pathologists in predominantly caucasian American school districts.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to determine if the number and type of African American English (AAE) features that are spoken in sentences influence speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') judgments of (a) how noticeable the dialect is (dialect detectability) and (b) how understandable a speaker is to others (comprehensibility). METHOD: Certified SLPs with little conversational experience with AAE were recruited from predominantly Caucasian American school districts in Michigan. They listened to sentences that contained varying amounts and types of AAE phonological features. The SLPs rated the sentences on 5-point scales regarding dialect detectability and comprehensibility. The ratings for the different sentences were compared to determine how the variables contributed to the SLPs' judgments of AAE. RESULTS: Both dialect detectability and comprehensibility ratings were affected by the number of AAE features that were included in the sentences. The types of AAE features consistently affected the comprehensibility ratings but less consistently affected the dialect detectability ratings. CONCLUSION: Multiple factors may affect SLPs' perceptions of AAE. The outcomes have both theoretical and practical implications.

The use of conversational repairs by African American preschoolers.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to describe the types and frequency of conversational repairs used by African American (AA) children in relationship to their geographic locations and levels of performance on commonly used speech-language measures. METHOD: The strategies used to initiate repairs and respond to repair requests were identified in audiovisual records of spontaneous speech sampled from 120 Head Start students in Michigan (n = 69) and Louisiana (n = 51) at 3 years of age. The 30-40-min samples were elicited with common stimuli and activities while the children interacted with an adult examiner. RESULTS: All participants initiated repairs and responded to examiner requests for conversational repairs. Some repair strategies were observed more often than others. The frequency, but not the types, of some of the strategies used varied significantly with participant location and level of speech-language performance. CONCLUSION: AA children used the same types of conversational repair strategies that have been observed among young speakers of Standard English varieties. CLINICAL IMPLICATION: Use of conversational repairs should be included among the pragmatic behaviors expected for 3-year-old AA children.

Toward validation of a minimal competence phonetic core for african american children.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to show (a) whether the minimal competence core (MCC) of consonants used by African American preschoolers in I. Stockman (2006) can be observed in a larger group of children using shorter and more controlled speech samples and (b) whether the MCC pass/fail outcomes are differentially related to performance on selected criterion measures of typical and atypical speech. METHOD: Word-initial single and clustered consonants were sampled in the conversational speech of 120 Head Start students who were distributed in a northern (Lansing, Michigan) and a southern (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) regional location. RESULTS: The data generally corroborated the earlier preliminary report, which was based on just 7 children. More than 80% of the children met criteria for passing the core set of phonetic competencies, which included word-initial consonant clusters and 13 consonant singletons. Pass/fail outcomes were significantly related to suspected clinical delay and the overall Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (PCC-R). CONCLUSION: The initial consonant core identified in this study is potentially useful for identifying speech delay among young African American children. Clinical and research issues related to its use for diagnostic screening are discussed.

Multicultural/multilingual instruction in educational programs: a survey of perceived faculty practices and outcomes.

PURPOSE: To describe the instructional strategies reported for multicultural/multilingual issues (MMI) education at programs in speech-language pathology and audiology and the perceived ease and effectiveness of doing so. METHOD: A 49-item questionnaire elicited anonymous responses from administrators, faculty, and teaching clinical supervisors at educational programs accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in the United States. The data were provided by 731 respondents from 79.6% of 231 accredited U.S. programs. They included instructors who taught courses dedicated to MMI and those who did not. RESULTS: Respondents were generally committed to multicultural instruction, but they varied in their reported instructional practices and perceived levels of preparedness, effectiveness, and needs. General curricular infusion without an MMI-dedicated course was the most common instructional model used. Students were judged to be at least modestly prepared to deal with diversity issues as a result of their multicultural instruction, although current instructional approaches were not viewed as optimal. More positive outcomes were reported by instructors of MMI-dedicated than MMI-nondedicated courses. CONCLUSION: The instructional models and strategies used for MMI education vary, and programs are challenged by multiple issues in complying with the mandate for MMI curricular infusion.

Alveolar bias in the final consonant deletion patterns of African American children.

PURPOSE: The variable deletion of word-final consonants is a well-known feature of African American English (AAE). This study aimed to show whether African American children exhibit an alveolar bias in their deletion of final voiceless stops as has been observed for their production of final nasals. METHOD: The data were extracted from more than 5000 spontaneous utterances in the speech samples of 7 African American children at 32 to 36 months of age. RESULTS: The final alveolar voiceless stop /-t/ was deleted significantly more often in word-final position than were /-p/ and /-k/ in both singleton and clustered contexts. The deletion of /-t/ in final clusters preceding other consonants at word boundaries contributed significantly to this bias. No significant differences were observed among the stops in their relative frequencies of deletion when a vowel sound followed or when the final stop was prepausal at word boundaries. CONCLUSION: African American children's deletion of final consonants is patterned even at an early age. It varies with whether the voiceless stop consonant is an alveolar sound or not and with the type of phonetic context in which the alveolar stop is embedded. This alveolar stop bias was attributed to phonetic and grammatic constraints on articulating final /-t/ relative to final /-p/ and /-k/. CLINICAL IMPLICATION: All final consonant deletion patterns should not be regarded as typical of African American children when assessing their speech even as early as age 3;0 (years;months).

Evidence for a minimal competence core of consonant sounds in the speech of African American children: a preliminary study.

Most studies have stressed those aspects of African American English (AAE) that differ from Standard English (SE) varieties. Therefore word-final consonant performance has been investigated most often. In contrast, this intensive study aimed to reveal whether a common core of initial consonants is used by typically developing AAE children at or close to the 3rd birthday. More than 2000 phonetically transcribed utterances were extracted from the audiovisual archives of natural samples of speech for seven children. All seven children met the productivity criterion for a shared core of 15 sounds in their repertoire of correctly produced word-initial consonants. The children also met the criterion for using word-initial consonant clusters or blends that commonly included the stop+sonorant type. The results provided preliminary evidence for a minimal competence core of word-initial consonants that is consistent with developmental data on typically developing speakers of SE and other languages besides English. Sample sizes of more than 50 spontaneous utterances were required to elicit these core features. Research and clinical implications of these results are discussed.

Children's story retelling under different modality and task conditions: implications for standardizing language sampling procedures.

This study was motivated by the possibility of standardizing a story-retelling task well enough to function as a brief screener of children's global syntactic features. Specifically, the study determined whether the story presentation modality (i.e., audio-only or combined auditory and visual presentation) differentially influenced the quantity of talk, its lexical diversity and sentence complexity, as expressed in children's retold story narratives and responses to direct questions about the story. Twenty-nine Caucasian male pre-schoolers, who ranged in age from 4;2 to 5;6 (years;months), were randomly assigned to a modality presentation condition. The audio-only group did not differ significantly from the audiovisual group in the amount of talk, lexical diversity, or syntactic complexity of sentences used in the narratives or responses to direct questions. Nevertheless, the story-retelling task yielded the longest and most grammatically complete utterances. Responses to direct questions yielded the largest number of utterances and different words. The clinical implications of these results for standardizing language sampling are discussed.

The New Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III: An Illusion of Unbiased Assessment?

This article examines whether changes in the ethnic minority composition of the standardization sample for the latest edition of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III, Dunn & Dunn, 1997) can be used as the sole explanation for children's better test scores when compared to an earlier edition, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R, Dunn & Dunn, 1981). Results from a comparative analysis of these two test editions suggest that other factors may explain improved performances. Among these factors are the number of words and age levels sampled, the types of words and pictures used, and characteristics of the standardization sample other than its ethnic minority composition. This analysis also raises questions regarding the usefulness of converting scores from one edition to the other and the type of criteria that could be used to evaluate whether the PPVT-III is an unbiased test of vocabulary for children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.