Seminars in Speech and Language最新文献

Students who speak African American English are typically rated lower in language and literacy ability than students who speak General American English. When this happens, it can lead to higher referral rates for evaluations for speech and language disorders and a mischaracterization of academic ability due to linguistic biases. This study explores how teacher ratings of student language and literacy ability are influenced by student dialect use.Teachers completed a questionnaire about students' language and literacy skills. Two measures of student dialect use were computed from student language samples: percent dialect density and a listener judgment task. Linear regressions were conducted to determine the predictive effects of dialect density and listener judgments on teacher ratings. Given that there were significant differences in teacher ratings across grade levels, analyses controlled for student grade.Across two measures of dialect, results suggested that student dialect use did not significantly influence teacher ratings of language and literacy skills when controlling for student grade.The results suggest that factors other than student dialect use may influence teacher ratings. Future research should consider both student-level variables (e.g., socio-economic status) and teacher-level variables (e.g., training and exposure to language variation).

This study applies a Black disability political approach to directly confront the shortcomings of the social model in affirming the communication of Black, disabled African American English (AAE)-speaking preschoolers. In a departure from clinical approaches to effective communication, this study assumes communication breakdowns as a central feature of interaction and explores strategies of repair and negotiation for redefining what makes communication effective.This study presents two case studies of Black, disabled AAE-speaking 4-year-olds. Their play samples are qualitatively analyzed to determine how they use strategies of repair and negotiation to achieve communicative goals and establish connections with their communication partners.The Black, disabled AAE-speaking 4-year-olds in this study used a variety of repair and negotiation strategies, including requesting a repair, responding to other-initiated repair requests, self-repair, co-constructing meaning, and seeking assistance. Their use of these strategies does not always fit into clinical frames of defining effective communication. Yet, the children demonstrate an awareness of and engagement with shared goals surrounding interaction and connection.Centering the languaging practices of multiply-marginalized disabled children is an opportunity for expanding our clinical approaches and our own communication practices to affirm the agency of the children with whom we make meaning.

Dialect differences between African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) impact how children comprehend sentences. However, research on real-time sentence processing has the potential to reveal the underlying causes of these differences. This study used eye tracking, which measures how children interpret linguistic features as a sentence unfolds, and examined how AAE- and MAE-speaking children processed "was" and "were," a morphology feature produced differently in MAE and AAE. Fifty-nine participants, ages 7;8 to 11;0 years, completed standardized measures of dialect density and receptive vocabulary. In the eye tracking task, participants heard sentences in MAE with either unambiguous (e.g., "Jeremiah") or ambiguous (e.g., "Carolyn May"), subjects and eye movements were measured to singular (image of one person) or plural referents (image of two people). After the onset of the auxiliary verb, AAE-speaking children were sensitive to "was" and "were" when processing sentences but were less likely than MAE-speaking children to use "was" as a basis for updating initial predictions of plural referents. Among African American children, dialect density was predictive of sensitivity to "was" when processing sentences. Results suggest that linguistic mismatch impacts how contrastive verb morphology is used to update initial interpretations of MAE sentences.

The purpose of this clinical seminar is to clarify terminology and promote accurate understanding of linguistic concepts and use of related terminology among speech-language pathologists, linguists, educators, researchers, and interdisciplinary teams. In this paper, we clarify two phenomena, verbal /s/ and code shifting that have been used in both child and adult African American Language (AAL) literature, and explain the implications that clarifications have for more careful descriptions of child AAL. In addition, we highlight aspectual forms and variable use of constructions in caregiver speech as a means of exemplifying patterns of variation in children's input that should be taken into consideration in their development of AAL. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations for assessment and future research.

Communication partner training (CPT) is an evidence-based treatment approach, applied when working with people with traumatic brain injury (pwTBI). However, all existing programs are available in English only. This article focuses on surveying people in China about their awareness of CPT for pwTBI, and the perceived benefits and challenges of implementing CPT programs, with a view to providing recommendations for optimal services. The authors surveyed 339 medical professional (n = 169) and non-medical professional (n = 170) communication partners to obtain their awareness about CPT. Further, they were asked to identify the potential barriers and benefits of implementing CPT. Potential components that should be considered when developing a CPT program for pwTBI in China were also identified by the communication partners. This article reported low awareness levels about CPT for both medical professional (33.33%) and non-medical professional (22.14%) communication partners. Both groups reported interest in opportunities to receive CPT. The findings of this study will be useful as a guide when developing CPT programs for pwTBI in China. The findings also have implications for the global translation of CPT programs to other languages and countries where they may have a positive impact on the lives of pwTBI and their communication partners.

Various researchers have identified naming speed (rapid automatized naming [RAN]) as a predictor for reading skills and dyslexia. Although fewer studies investigate the connection between RAN and writing acquisition, their results suggest a connection between alphanumeric RAN tasks and spelling skills. Since the cognitive processes relevant to RAN have not yet been researched, it is unclear which components connect spelling performance and naming speed. Various authors propose a connection through orthographic and visual knowledge. This study investigated whether and how alphanumeric (letters and digits) and non-alphanumeric RAN (colors, objects) relate to spelling skills in German. Therefore, we investigated naming speed abilities in German 8- to 11-year-olds (n = 103) with pure developmental dysgraphia (i.e., isolated spelling deficit without reading deficit; n = 22), combined developmental dysgraphia and dyslexia (n = 26), and typical spelling and reading skills (n = 55). We found significant differences between children with pure developmental dysgraphia and children with typical reading and spelling skills for alphanumeric, but not non-alphanumeric RAN tasks. Our findings suggest that alphanumeric RAN, in contrast to non-alphanumeric RAN, is related to spelling. The study thus reveals the relevant difference between alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric RAN tasks and points toward distinct underlying cognitive mechanisms.

The United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child highlight the importance of children being involved in matters that concern them. Examining children's drawings can support speech-language pathologists' understanding of children's unique communication experiences, especially when considered alongside a language sample analysis (LSA). This study investigated drawings as a tool for use with multilingual children. The participants were 19 children aged 3 to 5 years who used Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English with either typical development (TD, n = 10) or developmental language disorder (DLD, n = 9). Children drew themselves talking, completed the Speech Activity and Participation Assessment of Children (SPAA-C), and provided language samples in both language contexts. Drawings were examined for themes and focal points, the SPAA-C was coded for emotion types, and language samples were analyzed using LSA measures (e.g., mean length of utterance, Index of Productive Syntax). The TD group represented themes more often within their drawings compared to the DLD group. Responses on the SPAA-C were generally positive for both groups. The TD group achieved higher scores across almost all LSA measures compared to the DLD group. The findings suggest that drawings, in concert with LSAs, may be a useful tool in understanding multilingual children's unique communication experiences.

Multilingualism is the norm, not the exception, with most children speaking more than one language daily. These factors have motivated an increased need to better understand language use in the growing population of children whose cultural and linguistic background evidence language variation by way of Creole languages and dialects of American Englishes. Within speech-language pathology in the United States, however, a cultural and linguistic mismatch exists with only 8% of speech-language pathologists self-identifying as multilingual service providers. A variety of publications have documented speech-language development and disorders in speakers of majority language pairings (such as Spanish-English) to address this mismatch and the potential for misdiagnosis of speech-language function. However, there is a shortage of information on speakers of minority language pairings (such as a Creole language and its lexifier) for supporting culturally responsive practices in speech-language pathology. This clinical seminar considers multilingualism for speech-language pathology with the goal of offering a historical context. In so doing, this clinical seminar aims to address the need for distinguishing between dialect and disorder, and offer practical considerations that reduce the risk of misdiagnosis in children who speak minority languages such as Creoles (e.g., Gullah/Geechee, Jamaican Creole) and dialects of American Englishes (e.g., African American English), as examples in the context of the United States.

This tutorial aimed to bridge the gap in the literature by presenting historical and contextual backgrounds on Caribbean Creoles and their speakers while examining the potential benefits and practical implications of incorporating translanguaging into speech-language intervention for children from Caribbean Creole-speaking backgrounds. Utilizing the principles of translanguaging, this tutorial introduces the Translanguaging Speech-Language Intervention Framework (TSI Framework) for clinical speech-language-hearing intervention. The TSI is proposed as a useful tool for working with Caribbean Creole children, though it is applicable to other groups as well. Incorporating TSI into intervention with Caribbean Creole speakers allows for bilingual children to develop and grow their unitary complex language system, equips service providers with a tool to provide culturally responsive service, fosters a strength-based approach for bilingual intervention and assessment, supports families and encourages home language maintenance, and promotes and advocates for linguistic justice.