NATURE AND PREVALENCE OF SLI IN AAE SPEAKING CHILDREN

迫切需要流行率数据和识别和确认非裔美国儿童语言障碍存在的独特方法。在没有适当的信息，这种类型的，非洲裔美国儿童谁是非洲裔美国人英语（AAE）的发言者是高风险的误认为语言障碍，并可能接受昂贵的服务，是不需要的。相反，如果没有对语言问题进行必要的干预，患有语言障碍的儿童可能无法被发现，无法发挥其学术和职业潜力。本项目的目的是建立非洲儿童特定语言障碍（SLI）的患病率估计，并调查紧张作为AAE儿童ALI的临床标志物的潜力。受试者将是入学时确定的约750名4岁和5岁的非裔美国儿童。将从该样本以及年龄和语言匹配的对照组中确定SLI儿童。所有儿童都将参加语言筛选方案，筛选失败的儿童将接受后续诊断方案。沿着来自随机选择的通过筛选的儿童组的表现，结合动词形态学的特定探针的诊断信息将被检查用于潜在的临床标记物。与最近报告的大多数儿童的患病率估计数相比，预计这一非裔美国人样本的估计数将因社会经济地位而异。结果将为许多公共政策决策提供流行的重要性，并有助于目前的理论关于跨语言的临床标志物的普遍性，和SLI的性质。

The need for prevalence data and distinctive ways of identifying and confirming the presence of language impairments in African American children is acute. In the absence of appropriate information of this type, African American children who are speakers of African American English (AAE) are high risk for misidentification as language disordered and may be receiving costly services that are not needed. Conversely, children which disorders may go undetected and fail to reach their academic and vocational potentials in the absence of needed interventions for language problems. The purpose of this project is to establish prevalence estimates for Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in African children, and to investigate the potential of tense as a clinical marker for ALI in AAE- speaking children. Subjects will be approximately 750 4 and 5 year old African American children identified at the time of school entry. Children with SLI will be identified from this sample as well as one group each of age and language-matched controls. All children will participate in a language screening protocol and those who fall the screening will be administered a follow-up diagnostic protocol. Along with performances from a randomly selected set of children who passed the screening, the diagnostic information combined with specific probes of verb morphology will be examined for potential clinical markers. Compared to recently reported prevalence estimates for majority children, it is anticipated that estimates for this African American sample will vary relative to socioeconomic status. Outcomes will provide prevalence importance for many public policy decisions and contribute to current theorizing regarding the cross-linguistic generalizability of clinical markers, and the nature of SLI.