Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six: Validation of Language Skills in the Jamaican Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 152574012110681
Author(s):  
Leslie E. Kokotek ◽  
Karla N. Washington ◽  
Barbara Jane Cunningham ◽  
Rachel Wright Karem ◽  
Brittany Fletcher

The Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS) is one of a few validated outcome measures related to children’s communicative participation. Additional validation of the FOCUS measure could address the paucity of validated outcomes-based measures available for assessing preschool-age children, particularly for those who are multilingual. The data collected for this study, with a representative sample of Jamaican Creole-English speaking children, extend the applicability of the FOCUS to a broader range of preschoolers and expand psychometric evidence for the FOCUS to a multilingual and understudied context.

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 836-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie D. Anderson ◽  
Stacy A. Wagovich

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine (a) explicit and implicit verbal response inhibition in preschool children who do stutter (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) and (b) the relationship between response inhibition and language skills. Method Participants were 41 CWS and 41 CWNS between the ages of 3;1 and 6;1 (years;months). Explicit verbal response inhibition was measured using a computerized version of the grass–snow task (Carlson & Moses, 2001), and implicit verbal response inhibition was measured using the baa–meow task. Main dependent variables were reaction time and accuracy. Results The CWS were significantly less accurate than the CWNS on the implicit task, but not the explicit task. The CWS also exhibited slower reaction times than the CWNS on both tasks. Between-group differences in performance could not be attributed to working memory demands. Overall, children's performance on the inhibition tasks corresponded with parents' perceptions of their children's inhibition skills in daily life. Conclusions CWS are less effective and efficient than CWNS in suppressing a dominant response while executing a conflicting response in the verbal domain.


1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Ratusnik ◽  
Roy A. Koenigsknecht

Six speech and language clinicians, three black and three white, administered the Goodenough Drawing Test (1926) to 144 preschoolers. The four groups, lower socioeconomic black and white and middle socioeconomic black and white, were divided equally by sex. The biracial clinical setting was shown to influence test scores in black preschool-age children.


2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 256-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Petermann ◽  
Franz Petermann ◽  
Ina Schreyer

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a screening instrument that addresses positive and negative behavioral attributes of children and adolescents. Although this questionnaire has been used in Germany to gather information from parents and teachers of preschoolers, few studies exist that verify the validity of the German SDQ for this age. In the present study, teacher ratings were collected for 282 children aged 36 to 60 months (boys = 156; girls = 126). Likewise, teacher ratings were collected with another German checklist for behavior problems and behavior disorders at preschool age (Verhaltensbeurteilungsbogen für Vorschulkinder, VBV 3–6). Moreover, children’s developmental status was assessed. Evaluation included correlation analysis as well as canonical correlation analysis to assess the multivariate relationship between the set of SDQ variables and the set of VBV variables. Discriminant analyses were used to clarify which SDQ variables are useful to differentiate between children with or without developmental delay in a multivariate model. The results of correlation and discriminant analyses underline the validity of the SDQ for preschoolers. According to these results, the German teacher SDQ is recommended as a convenient and valid screening instrument to assess positive and negative behavior of preschool age children.


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