Testing Language in the Presence of Dialect: Variation, Risk, and Clinical Validity

项目总结/摘要 语言学习是各种终身经济和健康成果的关键组成部分（例如，阅读， 就业，长期大学和职业成功）。强大的，主流的语言技能， 这对标准化语言评估很重要。说非主流方言的孩子 可能会受到语言测试中方言差异造成的复杂性的挑战 环境.有大量的工作记录了非裔美国儿童面临的这些挑战。 虽然修改现有的语言测试已经建议和实施了相当长的一段时间， 这些修改通常涉及要么给孩子们受方言影响的项目的学分，要么跳过这些项目。 所有项目。虽然这种便利可能会避免无效的惩罚性考试分数， 还可能妨碍临床诊断和所需的干预服务，从而加剧已经存在的 对有潜在需要的AA儿童的严重健康问题。我们的总体目标是了解 从严格的测量角度分析了AA儿童的语言和方言弱点。不 显然，语言的测量可以从方言的测量中分离出来，这是一个 这种语言的变体。我们的中心假设是，现有的语言测试项目衡量关键 语言的特点，有些项目衡量方言的关键特征，但之间的关系， 语言和方言的因素尚不清楚。从语言学上讲，我们知道语言障碍的许多特征 与AA方言重叠。因此，我们建议对AA儿童的大样本进行二次数据分析（n = 10）。 890)谁已经管理项目的两个标准化英语语言测试，并从谁是 自然语言样本。因此，该项目有三个具体目标： 1.评估DELV项目的心理测量学，以确定其与方言相关的程度 特色与主流英语特色。我们假设就像之前的调查和我们自己的调查一样 试点分析，这些项目将符合多个特定任务的因素，表明不同方面的 语言表现。 2.根据主流英语的标准化衡量标准，评估方言相关项目的回答， 语言发展测试。我们假设TOLD的项目将显示出很强的效度， 衡量主流英语的理解，方言的反应将显示合理的有效性， 用于测量AA方言所代表的语言规则。 3.比较DELV和TOLD中语言能力和/或方言的发展因素 自然主义的语言措施。我们假设，主流英语水平的衡量标准将 显示出高聚合效度，方言的测量可以聚集在规则特定的子技能中，有助于 诊断说方言的AA儿童的语言障碍。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Language learning is a key component of various lifelong economic and health outcomes (e.g, reading, employment, long-term college and career success). Strong, mainstream language skills are particularly important to performance on standardized language assessment. Children who speak nonmainstream dialects may be particularly challenged by the complexities created by dialect differences in language testing environments. There is a large body of work documenting these challenges for African American children. While modifications of existing language tests have been recommended and implemented for quite some time, these modifications usually involve either giving children credit for items influenced by dialect or skipping these items altogether. While such accommodations may avoid invalidly punitive test scores, such accommodations also may also impede clinical diagnosis and needed intervention services, thereby exacerbating an already serious health concern for AA children in potential need. Our overall objective is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of language and dialect in AA children from a rigorous measurement perspective. It is not clear that the measurement of language can be separated from the measurement of dialect, which is a variation on that language. Our central hypothesis is that items of existing language tests measure crucial features of language and that some items measure crucial features of dialect, but the relation between the factors of language and dialect remains unclear. Linguistically, we know many features of language impairment overlap with AA dialect. We therefore propose a secondary data analysis of a large sample of AA children (n = 890) who have been administered items of two standardized English language tests, and from whom were obtained naturalistic language samples. Accordingly, this project has three specific aims: 1. Evaluate the psychometrics of the DELV items for the extent to which they measure dialect-relevant features versus mainstream English features. We hypothesize that like prior investigations and our own pilot analyses, that the items will conform to multiple task-specific factors, indicating diverse aspects of language performance. 2. Evaluate the dialect-relevant item responses on a standardized measure of mainstream English, the Test of Language Development. We hypothesize that the items of the TOLD will show strong validity for measuring understanding of mainstream English and that dialect responses will show reasonable validity for measuring the linguistic rules represented by AA dialect. 3. Compare the developed factors of language proficiency and/or dialect from the DELV and the TOLD to naturalistic language measures. We hypothesize that measures of mainstream English proficiency will show high convergent validity and that measures of dialect may cluster in rule-specific subskills, useful to diagnose language disorder in dialect-speaking AA children.