ASSESSING BILINGUAL PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN YOUNG CHILDREN

说明(由申请人提供)：缺乏能够充分评估来自不同语言和文化背景的儿童的语言和识字技能发展的衡量工具。相反，专业人员使用的测量方法被认为与正常人群相比心理测量学上是健全的，但对说单语和双语的人之间的发展差异并不敏感，也不对双语发音进行标准化。这在音系学领域尤其如此，对双语音系学发展的定量测量仍处于初级阶段。因此，胆小症儿童通常被认为患有语音障碍，当他们的发育遵循不同的但不是紊乱的途径时。其他时候，有语言障碍的双语儿童被忽视，因为他们担心过度识别少数族裔人群中的障碍。本项目的目的是利用语音理论和双语研究的最新进展，1)开发一种有效和可靠的测量方法来识别说西班牙语和英语的双语儿童的语音障碍，并区分由于典型的双语语音发展和变化而导致的语音障碍和语音变异；2)评估双语儿童语音发展的多个方面的变化，以确定幼儿双语儿童语音系统的特征，这些特征是发育后期障碍的指标；3)开发培训材料并实地测试供言语语言病理学家使用的语音筛选工具，该工具基于根据目标1开发的工具。将使用横向和纵向混合设计来制定一种测量3至6岁说墨西哥、波多黎各和古巴西班牙语的儿童的语音发育的方法。准确评估双语儿童需要的措施至关重要，以确保对幼儿疾病的准确诊断。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a paucity of measurement tools that adequately assess the development of language and literacy skills in children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Rather, professionals utilize measures that are considered psychometrically sound relative to the normative population but are not sensitive to developmental differences between monolingual and bilingual speakers, nor standardized on bilingual poulations. This is particularly true in the domain of phonology where quantitative measurement of bilingual phonological development is still in its infancy. Consequently, bilinugal children are often identified as having a phonological disorder when their development is following a different, but not disordered pathway. Other times, biingual children with lingustic difficulties are ignored due to fear of over identification of disorders in minority populations. The aims of this project are to draw upon recent advances in phonological theory and bilingual research 1) To develop a valid and reliable measure to identify phonological disorder in bilingual Spanish and English speaking children and to distinguish disorder from phonological variation due to typical bilingual phonological development and change; 2) To assess change in multiple aspects of bilingual children's phonological development in order to identify characteristics of young bilingual children's phonological systems that are indicators of disorder later in development and 3) To develop training materials and field test a phonological screening tool for use by speech language pathologists, that is based the instrument developed under Aim 1. A mixed cross-sectional and longitudinal design will be used to develop a measure of the phonological development of children ages 3 to 6 years, who speak Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban dialects of Spanish. Measures that accurately assess the needs of bilingual chidlren are critically important in order to assure accurate diagnosis of disorders in young children.