African American preschoolers' language, emergent literacy skills, and use of African American English: a complex relation.

PURPOSE: This study examined the relation between African American preschoolers' use of African American English (AAE) and their language and emergent literacy skills in an effort to better understand the perplexing and persistent difficulties many African American children experience learning to read proficiently. METHOD: African American preschoolers' (n = 63) vocabulary skills were assessed in the fall and their language and emergent literacy skills were assessed in the spring. The relation between students' AAE use and their vocabulary and emergent literacy skills was examined using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), controlling for fall vocabulary and other child, family, and school variables. Children's use of AAE was examined across two contexts-sentence imitation and oral narrative using a wordless storybook prompt. RESULTS: There was a significant -shaped relation between the frequency with which preschoolers used AAE features and their language and emergent literacy skills. Students who used AAE features with greater or lesser frequency demonstrated stronger sentence imitation, letter-word recognition, and phonological awareness skills than did preschoolers who used AAE features with moderate frequency, controlling for fall vocabulary skills. Fewer preschoolers used AAE features during the sentence imitation task with explicit expectations for Standard American English (SAE) or School English than they did during an oral narrative elicitation task with implicit expectations for SAE. CONCLUSIONS: The nonlinear relation between AAE use and language and emergent literacy skills, coupled with systematic differences in AAE use across contexts, indicates that some preschoolers may be dialect switching between AAE and SAE, suggesting emerging pragmatic/metalinguistic awareness.     

Negative concord in child African American English: implications for specific language impairment.

In this study, African American English (AAE)-speaking children's comprehension of 2 different types of double negative sentences was examined and contrasted with that of a comparison group of Standard American English (SAE)-speaking children. The first type of double negative, negative concord, involves 2 negative elements in a sentence that are interpreted together as single negation. The second type of double negative, called true double negation, involves 2 negatives that are interpreted as independent negatives. A cross-sectional cohort of 61 (35 AAE, 26 SAE) typically developing children ranging in age from 5;2 (years;months) to 7;11 participated. The children responded to story-based grammatical judgment tasks that required them to differentiate between negative concord and true double negation. Results revealed no statistically significant differences between AAE- and SAE-speaking children in the way they interpreted negative concord and true double negation. However, there were significantly more correct responses to negative concord sentences across combined groups. In particular, the older children (i.e., 7-year-olds) produced more correct responses to negative concord than did the younger group (i.e., 5-year-olds). Explanations for these findings are framed in terms of children's knowledge about sentences with 2 negatives, the constraints affecting the interpretation of 2 negatives that include negative concord, and the clinical importance of negative concord for assessing specific language impairment in child AAE speakers.     

An assessment battery for identifying language impairment in African American children.

This investigation compares the performances of 24 African American children, diagnosed as language impaired (LI) and receiving school-based language therapy, to 2 groups of typically developing peers (N = 48) on 5 traditional types of language assessment measures. Three of the measures were derived from child-centered free play language sample analyses and included average length of communication units (MLCU), frequencies of complex syntax, and numbers of different words. Two of the measures examined language comprehension and included responses to requests for information in the form of Wh-questions and responses to probes of active and passive sentence constructions. The performances of the group of children with language impairments were significantly lower on each measure than that of chronological age matched African American children who were typically developing. Sensitivity and specificity of the battery appeared excellent. The findings are discussed in terms of the potential of these informal language measures to contribute to a culturally fair assessment protocol for young African American children.     

Symbolic play and early language development in normal and mentally retarded children

This study investigated the relationship of early language development and symbolic play behaviors in normal and mentally retarded children. Piaget's type IIA symbolic play, the ability to represent one object with another, was assessed by employing an object stimulus gradient. Forty children served as subjects: 20 normal and 20 trainable mentally retarded youngsters, 10 each at MLU Stage Pre-I and MLU Stage I. The results of a three-way ANOVA revealed significant main effects of MLU Stage and object condition and a significant interaction of MLU by object condition. The MLU Stage Pre-I children demonstrated significantly more restricted symbolic play than did the MLU Stage I children regardless of developmental status. A Pearson product-moment correlation between MLU and mean symbolic play score showed a high positive correlation between the two variables. Symbolic play which involves the use of one object to represent another was found to be a strong correlate of early language development.     

Figurative language and reading comprehension in American deaf and hard-of-hearing children: textual interactions

The limited evidence on figurative language in deaf children, as well as 'professional intuitions', has led those who teach them to conclude that reading comprehension will be significantly complicated by figurative language. However, there are disagreements among practitioners as to how best to manage figurative language when it appears in text. Generally, some sort of textual modification is made, although those for and against 'simplified texts' are split on this issue. Those who favour them suggest either that complex vocabulary and syntax be reconstructed or that they be gradually introduced. However, reformulations are seldom standard nor are the figurative tropes such as metaphor, simile, personification etc. systematically introduced. Those against simplified texts argue that the problem of figurative language control is not one of linguistic complexity, but one of cognitive processing: deaf children can grasp inferred or indirect meaning so long as the referential domain is made clear. Such comprehension comes by way of demonstration, practice and feedback and figurative language need not present a special problem. In this present study, 14 deaf and hard-of-hearing children and youths who had been randomly assigned to one of two groups were given an original story entitled 'Peaches the Cat' and asked to read it. One group read a literal version of the story and one group read a figurative version in which all textual answers to the question were masked with figurative phraseology. Both groups answered the questions above a chance level and the figurative version did not prove to be more difficult than the literal version. The two groups were comparable on hearing loss and on reading and language ability.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Reading behaviors of mothers and their children with language impairment during repeated storybook reading

This study examined the reading behaviors of five mothers and their preschool children with language impairment across three storybook readings. All mothers read the text, with four of the five mothers pointing to the pictures and asking questions to elicit nonverbal or minimal verbal responses. Four of the five children pointed to, answered questions about, and labeled and commented on the pictures. Two of the five children followed the action in the story. Three of the five dyads increased reading behaviors and reading time across the three readings. However, the quality and quantity of reading behaviors differed from typical parent-child dyads.     

Imitation and language development: issues and clinical implications.

The relationship between imitation and language learning is of both theoretical and clinical interest. While current psycholinguistic accounts give imitation only a limited role in language learning, learning theorists and others continue to refer to imitation as a major factor in the child's acquisition of language. Clinicians deal with imitation in modeling procedures as well as in counseling parents about how to promote children's language development. A review of theory and research on the nature and development of imitation reveals wide variation in terminology, definitions, and explanations. The clinical use of imitation procedures have greater significance for the acquisition of communication skills than for the development of linguistic structure.     

Very-low-birthweight children and speech and language development.

Very low birthweight (VLBW) is often considered to be a risk factor for speech and language disorders, yet data are equivocal. The present study compared speech and language comprehension and production between 249 very-low-birthweight (VLBW: less than 1.5 kg) and 363 normal-birthweight 8-year-olds, randomly sampled in a geographic area. Mean performance for the entire group of VLBW children and for the group when 24 VLBW children with major neurologic abnormalities were excluded, was significantly lower than for controls on the majority of speech and language measures. Further analyses addressed the clinical significance of these statistically significant differences. Test scores were converted to standard scores and grouped according to standard deviation intervals, thus portraying each child's performance in terms of the magnitude of discrepancy from each test's mean. When the 24 children with major neurological abnormalities were excluded, no significant differences between the VLBW and control children were observed. Using discrepancy between WISC-R performance IQ and language to define specific language impairment (SLI), a higher percentage of control than VLBW children were identified as having SLI. Neonatal risk factors did not differentiate between VLBW children with or without SLI. A higher proportion of VLBW than control children did present subnormal language associated with IQ less than 85, hearing deficits, and/or major neurological impairments. Thus, SLI is not more common among VLBW than control children. Language deficits accompanied by more general developmental problems, however, are more frequent.     

Learning new words: phonotactic probability in language development.

Though the influences of syntactic and semantic regularity on novel word learning are well documented, considerably less is known about the influence of phonological regularities on lexical acquisition. The influence of phonotactic probability, a measure of the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence, on novel word learning is investigated in this study. Thirty-four typically developing children (from ages 3 years 2 months to 6 years 3 months) participated in a multitrial word-learning task involving nonwords of varying phonotactic probability (common vs. rare) paired with unfamiliar object referents. Form and referent learning were tested following increasing numbers of exposures (1 vs. 4 vs. 7) and following a 1-week delay. Correct responses were analyzed to determine whether phonotactic probability affected rate of word learning, and incorrect responses were analyzed to examine whether phonotactic probability affected the formation of semantic representations, lexical representations, or the association between semantic and lexical representations. Results indicated that common sound sequences were learned more rapidly than rare sound sequences across form and referent learning. In addition, phonotactic probability appeared to influence the formation of semantic representations and the association between semantic and lexical representations. These results are integrated with previous findings and theoretical models of language acquisition.     

Differences at 17 months: productive language patterns in infants at familial risk for dyslexia and typically developing infants.

Productive vocabulary composition is investigated in 17-month-old children who are participating in an ongoing longitudinal dyslexia research project in the Netherlands. The project is searching for early precursors for dyslexia and follows a group of children who are genetically at risk for dyslexia and a control group during the first 10 years of their lives. Among other measures, the Dutch version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (N-CDI) is used to investigate early vocabulary development. In this article, the first N-CDI results from the 2 groups of 17-month-old children are compared with each other, with other cross-sectional, cross-linguistic studies, and with a similar Finnish longitudinal dyslexia project. The Dutch children show the same general acquisition pattern as documented for other languages, but there are significant differences between the two groups of 17-month-old children in total number of words produced and in the linguistic composition of their productive vocabulary.     

Mother-child interactions with language-impaired children and their siblings.

There are possible effects of language impairment on adult-child interaction. Previous research focused on (1) examining common features of adult-child interaction in different groups of atypical language learners and (2) examining differences between language-impaired parent-child dyads and normal control dyads. The present investigation studies language-impaired children and their mothers in comparison both to their own younger siblings of the same language stage and to normal controls of the same language stage. Consistencies within families but not across families were found. In addition, large individual differences were observed for different families. The implications of these findings for our understanding of interactive styles and language impairment are discussed.     

Responding to joint attention and language development: a comparison of target locations.

This study examined the importance of target location (within vs. outside the visual field) on the relation between responding to joint attention and subsequent language development in 47 normally developing infants. The results supported a developmental progression in the infants' ability to locate targets from within to outside the visual field. In addition, individual differences in 15-month-old infants' ability to correctly locate targets outside the visual field was a unique predictor of expressive language at 24 months. Infants' ability to locate targets outside the visual field may demonstrate increasing capacities for attention regulation, representational thinking, and social cognition that may facilitate language learning. The implications of this study are discussed with regard to the usefulness of measures of responding to joint attention for identifying early language and developmental delays.