ASSESSING BILINGUAL PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN YOUNG CHILDREN

描述（由申请人提供）：缺乏足够的测量工具来评估来自不同语言和文化背景的儿童的语言和读写技能的发展。相反，专业人员使用的测量方法在心理测量学上相对于标准人群是合理的，但对单语和双语者之间的发展差异不敏感，也没有在双语人群中标准化。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，当双语儿童的发展遵循不同的但不是紊乱的途径时，他们通常被认定为有语音障碍。其他时候，有语言障碍的双语儿童由于担心在少数民族人群中被过度识别而被忽视。本研究的目的是利用语音理论和双语研究的最新进展：(1)建立一种有效可靠的方法来识别西班牙语和英语双语儿童的语音障碍，并将障碍与典型的双语语音发展和变化引起的语音变化区分开来；2)评估双语儿童语音发展的多个方面的变化，以确定幼儿语音系统的特征，这些特征是后期发展障碍的指标；3)开发培训材料并实地测试语音筛查工具，供语音语言病理学家使用，该工具基于目标1下开发的工具。将采用混合横截面和纵向设计来制定3至6岁儿童的语音发展措施，这些儿童讲墨西哥语、波多黎各语和古巴语方言。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.