Does Assessor Masking Affect Kindergartners' Performance on Oral Language Measures? A COVID-19 Era Experiment With Children From Diverse Home Language Backgrounds.

PURPOSE: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has prompted changes to child assessment procedures in schools such as the use of face masks by assessors. Research with adults suggests that face masks diminish performance on speech processing and comprehension tasks, yet little is known about how assessor masking affects child performance. Therefore, we asked whether assessor masking impacts children's performance on a widely used, individually administered oral language assessment and if impacts vary by child home language background. METHOD: A total of 96 kindergartners (5-7 years old, n = 45 with a home language other than English) were administered items from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool-Second Edition Recalling Sentences subtest under two conditions: with and without the assessor wearing a face mask. Regression analysis was used to determine if children scored significantly lower in the masked condition and if the effect of masking depended on home language background. RESULTS: Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence that students scored systematically differently in the masked condition. Children with a home language other than English scored lower overall, but masking did not increase the gap in scores by language background. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that children's performance on oral language measures is not adversely affected by assessor masking and imply that valid measurements of students' language skills may be obtained in masked conditions. While masking might decrease some of the social determinants of communication (e.g., recognition of emotions), masking in this experiment did not appear to detract from children's ability to hear and immediately recall verbal information. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23567463.

The effect of the Preparing Pequeños small-group cognitive instruction program on academic and concurrent social and behavioral outcomes in young Spanish-speaking dual-language learners.

Academic achievement for young dual language learners (DLL) is a critically acknowledged problem of national significance that has been understudied. To address this shortage, this study evaluated the effectiveness of Preparing Pequeños, an integrated small-group instruction program designed to promote increased learning for Spanish speaking DLL in language, literacy, and math. The DLL in the randomized Preparing Pequeños intervention classrooms were compared to control DLL with comparable Spanish language delays and in which the school district's core curriculum was being implemented. Intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as part of Preparing Pequeños, implemented new classroom and time management systems in order to conduct 90 min of small-group instruction four days each week across the school year. In total, 51 control and 52 intervention classrooms participated; pre-test measures were completed with 829 children, with 777 of these children also completing post-test measures (7% attrition). Results showed that intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as compared to control, showed greater increases in most of the targeted areas of cognitive instruction (d range = 0.60-2.38) and in the use of small groups (d range = 3.32-4.46), progress monitoring (d = 0.17) to inform instruction, and team teaching (d = 1.94). Intervention children, as compared to control, showed significantly greater gains in Spanish oral language, print knowledge, phonological awareness, and phonics with small to large effect sizes (d range = 0.14-0.52). Also, potentially as a result of greater attention to children's individual needs and support for managing their behavior, intervention children, as compared to control, showed greater decreases in school avoidance, anger, and aggression with small effect sizes (d range = -0.22 to -0.29). Results are discussed in relation to the need for greater attention in teachers' training in effective approaches for small-group instruction.