The need for prevalence data and distinctive ways of identifying and confirming the presence of language impairments in African American children is acute. In the absence of appropriate information of this type, African American children who are speakers of African American English (AAE) are high risk for misidentification as language disordered and may be receiving costly services that are not needed. Conversely, children which disorders may go undetected and fail to reach their academic and vocational potentials in the absence of needed interventions for language problems. The purpose of this project is to establish prevalence estimates for Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in African children, and to investigate the potential of tense as a clinical marker for ALI in AAE- speaking children. Subjects will be approximately 750 4 and 5 year old African American children identified at the time of school entry. Children with SLI will be identified from this sample as well as one group each of age and language-matched controls. All children will participate in a language screening protocol and those who fall the screening will be administered a follow-up diagnostic protocol. Along with performances from a randomly selected set of children who passed the screening, the diagnostic information combined with specific probes of verb morphology will be examined for potential clinical markers. Compared to recently reported prevalence estimates for majority children, it is anticipated that estimates for this African American sample will vary relative to socioeconomic status. Outcomes will provide prevalence importance for many public policy decisions and contribute to current theorizing regarding the cross-linguistic generalizability of clinical markers, and the nature of SLI.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC004273-03
Application #
6476027
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-BBBP-3 (01))
Program Officer
Cooper, Judith
Project Start
1999-12-01
Project End
2004-11-30
Budget Start
2001-12-01
Budget End
2002-11-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2002
Total Cost
$353,062
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Type
Organized Research Units
DUNS #
791277940
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
Thomas-Tate, Shurita; Washington, Julie; Craig, Holly et al. (2006) Performance of African American preschool and kindergarten students on the expressive vocabulary test. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch 37:143-9
Craig, Holly K; Washington, Julie A (2004) Grade-related changes in the production of African American English. J Speech Lang Hear Res 47:450-63