NATURE AND PREVALENCE OF SLI IN AAE SPEAKING CHILDREN

迫切需要流行数据和独特的方法来识别和确认非裔美国儿童语言障碍的存在。在缺乏这类适当信息的情况下，说非裔美国英语（AAE）的非裔美国儿童被误认为语言障碍的风险很高，可能会接受不必要的昂贵服务。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不会被发现，无法发挥其学业和职业潜力。本项目的目的是建立非洲儿童特殊语言障碍（SLI）的患病率估计，并研究紧张作为AAE儿童ALI的临床标志的潜力。研究对象将是大约750名4到5岁的非裔美国儿童，他们在入学时被确定。患有特殊语言障碍的儿童将从这个样本中被识别出来，另外还有一组年龄和语言匹配的对照组。所有儿童都将参与语言筛查方案，通过筛查的儿童将接受后续诊断方案。通过随机选择的一组通过筛选的儿童的表现，结合特定的动词形态学探针的诊断信息将被检查潜在的临床标志物。与最近报道的大多数儿童患病率估计相比，预计非洲裔美国人样本的估计值将因社会经济地位而异。结果将为许多公共政策决策提供普遍性的重要性，并有助于当前关于临床标记物的跨语言普遍性的理论，以及特殊语言障碍的本质。

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.