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Purpose: We examined language samples of young children learning African American English (AAE) to determine if and when their use of auxiliaries shows dialect-universal and dialect-specific effects. Method: The data were longitudinal language samples obtained from two children, ages 18 to 36 months, and three children, ages 33 to 51 months. Dialect-universal analyses examined age of first form and early uses of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries. Dialect-specific analyses focused on rates of overt marking by auxiliary type and syntactic construction and for BE by surface form and succeeding element. Results: Initial production of auxiliaries occurred between 19 and 24 months. The children's forms were initially restricted and produced in syntactically simple constructions. Over time, they were expanded in ways that showed their rates of marking to vary by auxiliary type, their rates of BE and DO marking to vary by syntactic construction, and their rates of BE marking to vary by surface form and succeeding element. Conclusions: Development of auxiliaries by young children learning AAE shows both dialect-universal and dialect-specific effects. The findings are presented within a development chart to guide clinicians in the assessment of children learning AAE and in the treatment of AAE-speaking children with language impairment.

Purpose: This study examined African American English--speaking children's use of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries. Method: The data were based on language samples obtained from 48 three-year-olds. Analyses examined rates of marking by auxiliary type, auxiliary surface form, succeeding element, and syntactic construction and by a number of child variables. Results: The children produced 3 different types of marking (mainstream overt, nonmainstream overt, zero) for auxiliaries, and the distribution of these markings varied by auxiliary type. The children's nonmainstream dialect densities were related to their marking of BE and DO but not modals. Marking of BE was influenced by its surface form and the succeeding verbal element, and marking of BE and DO was influenced by syntactic construction. Conclusions: Results extend previous studies by showing dialect-specific effects for children's use of auxiliaries and by showing these effects to vary by auxiliary type and children's nonmainstream dialect densities. Some aspects of the children's auxiliary systems (i.e., pattern of marking across auxiliaries and effects of syntactic construction) were also consistent with what has been documented for children who speak other dialects of English. These findings show dialect-specific and dialect-universal aspects of African American English to be present early in children's acquisition of auxiliaries.

Thirty-four children, with autism spectrum disorders, ages 4-14 years, were matched and randomly assigned to one of two conditions for learning a novel juice-making task and producing two novel words about the event. Seventeen sighted children were manually guided to perform the task and tactually prompted during imitated productions of novel words for the event. Their matched controls heard the novel words and watched the juice-making task being performed. Performances on four verbal and two nonverbal measures right after instruction and at 24-48 h post-instruction, revealed higher scores for the "hands-on", participation than observation group on both verbal and nonverbal tasks. This study offers a paradigm for exploring the instructional advantage of enhanced participatory experience.

Purpose: The authors set out to determine (a) whether African American children's spontaneous spoken language met use criteria for a revised minimal competence core with original and added morphosyntactic patterns at different geographical locations, and (b) whether pass/fail status on this core was differentiated on other criterion measures of language maturity. Method: The authors used a common set of activities and stimuli to elicit spontaneous speech samples from Head Start students, age 3;0 (years; months). The 119 participants were distributed at a northern (Lansing, MI) and a southern (Baton Rouge, LA) location. Results: More than 80% of the children at each location met criteria for 10 core competencies. They included sentence length, type, complexity, and morphosyntactic elaborations of sentences at the lexical, phrasal, and clausal levels. The 2 most significant predictors of pass/fail outcomes in a regression analysis were (a) clinical referral status and (b) the number of different words (NDW[subscript 100]) spoken in a speech sample. Conclusion: A minimal competence core analyses of spontaneous oral language samples may help to identify delayed spoken grammars in African American children. (Contains 8 tables.)

Research and clinical practices often rely on an utterance unit for spoken language analysis. This paper calls attention to the problems encountered when identifying utterance boundaries in young children's spontaneous conversational speech. The results of a reliability study of utterance boundary assignment are described for 20 females with graduate professional education in speech-language pathology. They judged audiorecorded spontaneous speech samples that were elicited from 4-year-old children. Their agreement with each other (interobserver) was significantly lower than their self-agreement (intraobserver). Interobserver agreement varied with the length/grammatical complexity of response turns, and the number and types of selective boundary cues presented in the speech stimuli. The findings have research and clinical implications for the utterance as a conceptual notion and its use constraints.

Purpose: The contemporary practices of delivering speech, language, and hearing services in schools reflect palpable gains in professional sensitivity to linguistic and cultural diversity. Method: This article reviews the dominant research themes on the oral language of African American preschoolers who contribute to such diversity in the United States. Specifically, it contrasts the historical and current frameworks that have guided studies of (a) such children's acquisition and use of English and (b) the strategies used to assess and modify their language. Conclusion: Research initiatives that can expand knowledge about this group are proposed.

Purpose: This study aimed to determine if the number and type of African American English (AAE) features that are spoken in sentences influence speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') judgments of (a) how noticeable the dialect is (dialect detectability) and (b) how understandable a speaker is to others (comprehensibility). Method: Certified SLPs with little conversational experience with AAE were recruited from predominantly Caucasian American school districts in Michigan. They listened to sentences that contained varying amounts and types of AAE phonological features. The SLPs rated the sentences on 5-point scales regarding dialect detectability and comprehensibility. The ratings for the different sentences were compared to determine how the variables contributed to the SLPs' judgments of AAE. Results: Both dialect detectability and comprehensibility ratings were affected by the number of AAE features that were included in the sentences. The types of AAE features consistently affected the comprehensibility ratings but less consistently affected the dialect detectability ratings. Conclusion: Multiple factors may affect SLPs' perceptions of AAE. The outcomes have both theoretical and practical implications.

Purpose: This study aimed to show (a) whether the minimal competence core (MCC) of consonants used by African American preschoolers in I. Stockman (2006) can be observed in a larger group of children using shorter and more controlled speech samples and (b) whether the MCC pass/fail outcomes are differentially related to performance on selected criterion measures of typical and atypical speech. Method: Word-initial single and clustered consonants were sampled in the conversational speech of 120 Head Start students who were distributed in a northern (Lansing, Michigan) and a southern (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) regional location. Results: The data generally corroborated the earlier preliminary report, which was based on just 7 children. More than 80% of the children met criteria for passing the core set of phonetic competencies, which included word-initial consonant clusters and 13 consonant singletons. Pass/fail outcomes were significantly related to suspected clinical delay and the overall Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (PCC-R). Conclusion: The initial consonant core identified in this study is potentially useful for identifying speech delay among young African American children. Clinical and research issues related to its use for diagnostic screening are discussed.

Purpose: This study aimed to describe the types and frequency of conversational repairs used by African American (AA) children in relationship to their geographic locations and levels of performance on commonly used speech-language measures. Method: The strategies used to initiate repairs and respond to repair requests were identified in audiovisual records of spontaneous speech sampled from 120 Head Start students in Michigan (n = 69) and Louisiana (n = 51) at 3 years of age. The 30-40-min samples were elicited with common stimuli and activities while the children interacted with an adult examiner. Results: All participants initiated repairs and responded to examiner requests for conversational repairs. Some repair strategies were observed more often than others. The frequency, but not the types, of some of the strategies used varied significantly with participant location and level of speech-language performance. Conclusion: AA children used the same types of conversational repair strategies that have been observed among young speakers of Standard English varieties. Clinical Implication: Use of conversational repairs should be included among the pragmatic behaviors expected for 3-year-old AA children.

Purpose: To describe the instructional strategies reported for multicultural/multilingual issues (MMI) education at programs in speech-language pathology and audiology and the perceived ease and effectiveness of doing so. Method: A 49-item questionnaire elicited anonymous responses from administrators, faculty, and teaching clinical supervisors at educational programs accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in the United States. The data were provided by 731 respondents from 79.6% of 231 accredited U.S. programs. They included instructors who taught courses dedicated to MMI and those who did not. Results: Respondents were generally committed to multicultural instruction, but they varied in their reported instructional practices and perceived levels of preparedness, effectiveness, and needs. General curricular infusion without an MMI-dedicated course was the most common instructional model used. Students were judged to be at least modestly prepared to deal with diversity issues as a result of their multicultural instruction, although current instructional approaches were not viewed as optimal. More positive outcomes were reported by instructors of MMI-dedicated than MMI-nondedicated courses. Conclusion: The instructional models and strategies used for MMI education vary, and programs are challenged by multiple issues in complying with the mandate for MMI curricular infusion. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures and 2 footnotes.)

Purpose: The variable deletion of word-final consonants is a well-known feature of African American English (AAE). This study aimed to show whether African American children exhibit an alveolar bias in their deletion of final voiceless stops as has been observed for their production of final nasals. Method: The data were extracted from more than 5,000 spontaneous utterances in the speech samples of 7 African American children at 32 to 36 months of age. Results: The final alveolar voiceless stop /-t/ was deleted significantly more often in word-final position than were /-p/ and /-k/ in both singleton and clustered contexts. The deletion of /-t/ in final clusters preceding other consonants at word boundaries contributed significantly to this bias. No significant differences were observed among the stops in their relative frequencies of deletion when a vowel sound followed or when the final stop was prepausal at word boundaries. Conclusion: African American children's deletion of final consonants is patterned even at an early age. It varies with whether the voiceless stop consonant is an alveolar sound or not and with the type of phonetic context in which the alveolar stop is embedded. This alveolar stop bias was attributed to phonetic and grammatic constraints on articulating final /-t/ relative to final /-p/ and /-k/. Clinical Implication: All final consonant deletion patterns should not be regarded as typical of African American children when assessing their speech even as early as age 3;0 (years;months).

This article examines whether changes in the ethnic minority composition of the standardization sample for the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III) can be used as the sole explanation for children's better test scores when compared to an earlier edition. Analysis suggests other factors may explain improved performance. (Contains references.) (CR)

Purpose: This study examined African American English-speaking children's use of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries. Method: The data were based on language samples obtained from 48 three-year-olds. Analyses examined rates of marking by auxiliary type, auxiliary surface form, succeeding element, and syntactic construction and by a number of child variables. Results: The children produced 3 different types of marking (mainstream overt, nonmainstream overt, zero) for auxiliaries, and the distribution of these markings varied by auxiliary type. The children's nonmainstream dialect densities were related to their marking of BE and DO but not modals. Marking of BE was influenced by its surface form and the succeeding verbal element, and marking of BE and DO was influenced by syntactic construction. Conclusions: Results extend previous studies by showing dialect-specific effects for children's use of auxiliaries and by showing these effects to vary by auxiliary type and children's nonmainstream dialect densities. Some aspects of the children's auxiliary systems (i.e., pattern of marking across auxiliaries and effects of syntactic construction) were also consistent with what has been documented for children who speak other dialects of English. These findings show dialect-specific and dialect-universal aspects of African American English to be present early in children's acquisition of auxiliaries. Key Words: auxiliaries, AAE, young children, In this study, we examined young African American English-speaking children's use of auxiliaries. This system of verbs is interesting because of the various linguistic properties that are related to it, [...]

Thirty-four children, with autism spectrum disorders, ages 4-14 years, were matched and randomly assigned to one of two conditions for learning a novel juice-making task and producing two novel words about the event. Seventeen sighted children were manually guided to perform the task and tactually prompted during imitated productions of novel words for the event. Their matched controls heard the novel words and watched the juice-making task being performed. Performances on four verbal and two nonverbal measures right after instruction and at 24-48 h post-instruction, revealed higher scores for the 'hands-on', participation than observation group on both verbal and nonverbal tasks. This study offers a paradigm for exploring the instructional advantage of enhanced participatory experience. Keywords Autism spectrum disorders * Sensorimotor * Tactile-kinesthetic * PROMPT * Verbal/nonverbal learning, Introduction Escalating information about autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has allowed us to diagnose it better than before but not how to intervene to predictably reverse its negative impact on adaptive [...]

This article discusses the use of language sample analysis (LSA) as a screening tool for preschool linguistic minority children due to the difficulty of using standardized tests in assessing language delays in speakers of minority dialects and languages. The use of LSA with seven African American preschoolers is examined. (CR)

Examination of native Chinese Mandarin speakers' identification of monosyllables that included oral and nasal stops representing English/Mandarin contrasts and noncontrasts in syllable-initial/-final positions found that the presence of nasal as opposed to oral stop consonants in the syllables appeared to be the most significant factor affecting error distribution. (42 references) (Author/CB)

Samples of the language used by 4 children were recorded longitudinally between 1.5 and 3 years of age. Children's expressions of motion were categorized into expressions involving a source, path, or goal of motion. There were developmental changes, including an increase in the use of words relating to goals as children grew older. (BC)

Types of utterances (with locative action utterances specifically differentiated) were evaluated in a language-impaired child tracked between one year, six months and three years of age. Comparison with utterances in other children suggests the importance of such a fine-grained analysis in detecting semantic properties of child language development. (Author/DB)

Purpose: This study aimed to show (a) whether the minimal competence core (MCC) of consonants used by African American preschoolers in I. Stockman (2006) can be observed in a larger [...]

The heterogeneous nature of consonants in the medial position of words may have prevented earlier studies from depicting a clear phonetic relationship between them and consonants in the initial and final positions. In this study, auditory perceptual judgments of children's consonant productions in the initial position of words were compared with those on medial consonants varying in number and order. Neither the perceived frequency of correct articulation nor the error pattern differentiated single consonants in the initial and medial positions of words at any age. Performance on consonant blends in the initial position of words differed from that on both types of medial sequences, but it was more similar to medial consonant sequences that corresponded with permissible word initial blends than to those that did not. It was concluded that initial and medial consonants may be regarded as performance equivalents only under certain conditions.

A comparative analysis of four studies that emphasized linguistic similarities (rather than differences) between nonstandard speakers and other groups focused on developmental characteristics of the semantic categories encoded by nonstandard speakers compared with other speakers. Implications for language assessment are discussed. (JW)

Responses to the Predictive Screening Test of Articulation (PSTA) were obtained from 460 first graders with articulation problems with respect to type, number, and consistency of sounds as measured by the Screening Deep Test of Articulation. PSTA item and total score preformance varied among misarticulated subgroups. (Author/CL)

Examines the literature on the language of working-class Black children, and emphasizes the need for a new framework for research. Describes research being conducted within such a revised framework (by the Center for Applied Linguistics), which focuses on analysis of stages in acquiring the total Black English system instead of focusing only on the structures that differ from standard English. (Author/MJL)