Penicillamine Therapy for Pediatric Cystinuria: Experience From a Cohort of American Children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether African American children who delete final consonants mark the presence of those consonants in a manner that might be overlooked in a typical speech evaluation. Using elicited sentences from 10 African American children from 4 to 9 years of age, two studies were conducted. First, vowel length was determined for minimal pairs in which final consonants were deleted. Second, listeners who identified final consonant deletions in the speech of the children were provided training in narrow transcription and reviewed the elicited sentences a second time. Results indicated that the children produced longer vowels preceding "deleted" voiced final consonants, and listeners perceived fewer deletions following training in narrow transcription. The results suggest that these children had knowledge of the final consonants perceived to be deleted. Implications for assessment and intervention are discussed.

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Language and Literacy Predictors of Dialect Density Among School-Age African American Children From Two Geographic Regions

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools ◽

10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00063 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (3) ◽

pp. 807-820

Author(s):

Lena G. Caesar ◽

Marie Kerins

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Multiple Regression ◽

Oral Language ◽

East Coast ◽

Geographic Region ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

School Age ◽

Regression Analyses ◽

Geographic Regions ◽

American Children

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between oral language, literacy skills, age, and dialect density (DD) of African American children residing in two different geographical regions of the United States (East Coast and Midwest). Method Data were obtained from 64 African American school-age children between the ages of 7 and 12 years from two geographic regions. Children were assessed using a combination of standardized tests and narrative samples elicited from wordless picture books. Bivariate correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to determine relationships to and relative contributions of oral language, literacy, age, and geographic region to DD. Results Results of correlation analyses demonstrated a negative relationship between DD measures and children's literacy skills. Age-related findings between geographic regions indicated that the younger sample from the Midwest outscored the East Coast sample in reading comprehension and sentence complexity. Multiple regression analyses identified five variables (i.e., geographic region, age, mean length of utterance in morphemes, reading fluency, and phonological awareness) that accounted for 31% of the variance of children's DD—with geographic region emerging as the strongest predictor. Conclusions As in previous studies, the current study found an inverse relationship between DD and several literacy measures. Importantly, geographic region emerged as a strong predictor of DD. This finding highlights the need for a further study that goes beyond the mere description of relationships to comparing geographic regions and specifically focusing on racial composition, poverty, and school success measures through direct data collection.

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