ASSESSING BILINGUAL PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN YOUNG CHILDREN

描述（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读写能力发展的测量工具。相反，专业人员使用的测量方法被认为相对于正常人群在心理测量上是合理的，但对单语和双语使用者之间的发展差异不敏感，也不对双语人群进行标准化。在音系学领域尤其如此，双语音系发展的定量测量仍处于起步阶段。因此，当双语儿童的发育遵循不同但并非无序的途径时，他们通常被认为患有语音障碍。其他时候，由于担心过度识别少数群体中的障碍，有语言困难的双语儿童被忽视。该项目的目的是利用语音理论和双语研究的最新进展 1) 开发一种有效且可靠的方法来识别双语西班牙语和英语儿童的语音障碍，并将障碍与典型双语语音发展和变化引起的语音变异区分开来； 2) 评估双语儿童语音发育多个方面的变化，以确定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) 开发培训材料并现场测试语音语言病理学家使用的语音筛查工具，该工具基于目标 1 开发的工具。将使用混合横断面和纵向设计来开发 3 至 6 岁讲墨西哥语的儿童语音发育的测量方法，西班牙语的波多黎各方言和古巴方言。准确评估双语儿童需求的措施对于确保幼儿疾病的准确诊断至关重要。

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.