Good language skills are fundamental to successful academic experiences. African-American children who use forms different from the standard English of classrooms are immediately disadvantaged at school entry. So little is known about the speech and language skills of African-American children, that those who present language impairments may go undetected. Tests designed and standardized to evaluate children who are standard English speakers frequently discriminate against children who are African-American so that children without language problems may be falsely identified. Conversely, the critical absence of descriptions of normal-language functioning for African-American children may result in failure to identify those children who have significant language and learning disorders. The purpose of this project is to establish reference profiles of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics of the oral productions of young African-American children. Subjects are 4 to 6 1/2 year old, preschool and kindergarten, boys and girls from middle- and lower-class homes. Connected speech-language samples will be elicited in a freeplay and a picture description context, transcribed orthographically, and scored for use of African-American forms, complex syntax, relational and referential semantics, and pragmatic intention. Distributional analyses will be performed as well as exploratory multivariate procedures. Comprehension and cognitive skills will be examined, as well as potential register shifts in a more informal sampling context. Outcomes will be examined for systematic differences relative to chronological age, and norm-referenced statements developed as well for 6-month age spans, gender, and socioeconomic status as warranted. The profiles established for children with normal-language skills will be compared to those of young children with known language disorders, to determine the criterion- referencing potential of the profiles for clinical assessment purposes. Project outcomes will contribute to our understanding of the speaking skills of African-American children, provide reference profiles for clinical and educational interpretation of typical and atypical performances for major aspects of language, and suggest important influences on outcomes that will require consideration in future linguistic theory formation.
| Craig, H K; Washington, J A (2000) An assessment battery for identifying language impairment in African American children. J Speech Lang Hear Res 43:366-79 |
| Craig, H K; Washington, J A; Thompson-Porter, C (1998) Performances of young African American children on two comprehension tasks. J Speech Lang Hear Res 41:445-57 |
| Washington, J A; Craig, H K (1998) Socioeconomic status and gender influences on children's dialectal variations. J Speech Lang Hear Res 41:618-26 |
| Craig, H K; Washington, J A; Thompson-Porter, C (1998) Average C-unit lengths in the discourse of African American children from low-income, urban homes. J Speech Lang Hear Res 41:433-44 |
| Washington, J A; Craig, H K; Kushmaul, A J (1998) Variable use of African American English across two language sampling context. J Speech Lang Hear Res 41:1115-24 |
