Informing Interventions: improving the measurement of children's vocabulary knowledge and caregiver input in the Deep South

目前的项目旨在改善研究人员衡量和描述整个南方腹地儿童在日常生活中听到的语言输入类型的方式。该项目还将表征这种输入的可变性如何有助于儿童的词汇知识。照顾者的语言输入和儿童的词汇发展之间存在着广泛的联系，因此，广泛的干预努力集中在修改家庭语言环境上。到目前为止，关于这一主题的大多数研究都是在美国东北部和中西部的城市进行的；然而，儿童在南方腹地听到和说的语言因文化和方言的差异而有所不同。通过了解南方腹地低社会经济地位(SES)儿童词汇差异背后的变异性来源，该项目可以为寻求缩小学业成就差距的现有干预措施提供信息。同样重要的是，评估对基于社区和基于方言的差异很敏感。农村、低SES社区的儿童，以及说非主流方言的儿童，如非裔美国人英语(AAE)和南方白人英语(SWE)，经常被归类为语言延迟或障碍，而实际上，他们的语言不同。目前的建议试图通过a)确定哪些标准化评估最准确地衡量儿童的词汇知识(静态和动态)，b)表征南方腹地语言保育者向他们的孩子提供的语言类型的可变性，以及c)确定儿童听到的语言输入的哪些方面最有可能促进词汇学习，以减少这些错误分类。确定在这一人群中衡量词汇的最佳方法，并考虑语言输入的差异如何影响词汇可变性，将减少对他们语言能力特征的不成比例的歧视。该项目由发展科学计划和既定的刺激竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The current project seeks to improve how researchers measure and characterize the type of language input children throughout the Deep South hear in their day-to-day lives. The project will also characterize how variability in this input contributes to children’s vocabulary knowledge. There are well-established associations between caregiver linguistic input and children’s vocabulary development, resulting in extensive intervention efforts focused on modifying the home language environment. To date, most research on this topic has been conducted in urban cities in the northeast and midwest United States; however, the language children hear and speak in the Deep South varies based on differences in culture and dialect. By understanding the sources of variability underlying vocabulary differences among low socioeconomic status (SES) children in the Deep South, this project can inform existing interventions which seek to close academic achievement gaps. It is also critical that assessments are sensitive to community-based and dialect-based differences. Children in rural, low SES communities, and children who speak nonmainstream dialects, such as African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE), are frequently classified as language delayed or disordered when really, they are language different. The current proposal seeks to reduce these misclassifications by a) identifying which standardized assessments most accurately measure children’s vocabulary knowledge (static versus dynamic), b) characterizing variability in the type of language caregivers in the Deep South provide to their children, and c) determining which aspects of the language input children hear are most likely to promote vocabulary learning. Determining the best approaches to measuring vocabulary in this population and considering how differences in language input contributes to vocabulary variability will reduce disproportionate discrimination against the characterization of their language abilities.This project is jointly funded by the Developmental Sciences Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.