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Purpose: To investigate children's performance on a fast mapping task. Possible effects across age, dialect group, and clinical status were explored., Method: Participants between the ages of 4 and 9 saw a series of pictured events and heard novel verbs. The novel verbs were in intransitive, transitive, dative, and complement syntactic frames or argument structures. The children then had to answer questions about the novel verbs that revealed what meaning they had attached to them. The field-testing of a new assessment instrument provided the data for typically developing children and children with language impairment from 2 linguistic communities: (a) mainstream American English speaking and (b) African American English speaking. Strict criteria were used for the 529 participants that defined both their clinical and dialect status., Results: There were significant effects of age and clinical status on the participants' ability to fast map a novel verb from its argument structure, but no significant effects for dialect., Conclusions: Regardless of dialect, children with specific language impairment have difficulty using syntactic frames to identify a likely meaning of a novel verb. In addition, the syntactic frames are differentially difficult, with complement structures being particularly hard.

The production of third-person /s/ on English verbs seems to be ahead of comprehension. Mainstream American English (MAE) is contrasted with African American English (AAE), in which /s/ is rarely supplied. Two studies explored what information children get solely from /s/ on the end of a verb. Sixty-five MAE- and 65 AAE-speaking four- to seven-year-olds participated in one of two experimental picture-choice comprehension studies. Neither group of four-year-olds could use the /s/ to determine if the event was generic rather than past tense on a verb (e.g. cuts/cut), or whether it was a verb or a noun compound as in The penguin dresses/The penguin dress. MAE-speakers do not use the information in third-person /s/ alone until age five, and not reliably until age six years. In keeping with AAE production, AAE-speaking children do not use the information in /s/ at all in this age range.

Purpose: This investigation examined the comprehension of third person singular /s/ in 30 African American English (AAE)-speaking children as a subject-number agreement marker on a comprehension task., Method: A comprehension task was presented to 30 typically developing AAE-speaking children between the ages of 4 and 6. The children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups to hear prerecorded counterbalanced stimuli. The comprehension task was designed to mask plurality of subject; therefore, the children had to focus on the verb as an indicator of subject number., Results: Repeated measure analysis revealed that AAE-speaking children in this investigation did not understand third person singular /s/ as a number agreement marker. An additional analysis, d' (pronounced "d prime"), indicated that the AAE-speaking children are not sensitive to the third person singular /s/ as a clue to subject number., Clinical Implications: The inclusion of comprehension tasks of third person singular /s/ to help diagnose language impairment in this population may be problematic.

Purpose: The purpose of this critical discourse analytic study is to identify how two key professional standards documents in the Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences field—the Standards for Certification document and the Essential Functions rubric—contribute to the discursive construction of the ideal speech-language pathologist and audiologist, and to examine whether the experiences and needs of people of color are taken into consideration in these documents. Method: Critical discourse analysis was used as both a conceptual and methodological lens for the systematic analysis of the targeted text. Results: The findings show that considerations of race and racism were almost entirely absent from both documents and thus reflected a discourse of race neutrality that is ideologically consistent with color-blind racism. The enactment of racially coded expectations within a construct of race-neutral discourse maintains racial inequities in the speech, language, and hearing sciences professions. Conclusions: The findings highlight the need for the open acknowledgment of racism in our institutional policies and discourses and official and ongoing commitments to concrete and measurable antiracist actions to counteract systemic racism. Recommendations for and examples of antiracist measures are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this tutorial is to discuss the use of curriculum-based language assessment (CBLA) with students who are English language learners and students who speak nonmainstream varieties of English, such as African American English. Method: The article begins with a discussion of the discourse of mathematics and the role of the speech-language pathologist (SLP), followed by a review of studies that includes those that examined the performance of English language learner and nonmainstream dialect-speaking students on word-based math items. Results: The literature review highlights the linguistic and content biases associated with word-based math problems. Useful strategies that SLPs and educators can incorporate in culturally and linguistically appropriate assessments are discussed. The tutorial ends with a discussion of CBLA as a viable assessment approach to use with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Conclusions: Tests used at national, state, and school levels to assess students' math abilities have associated linguistic bias and content bias often leading to an inaccurate depiction of culturally and linguistically diverse students' math skills. CBLA as an assessment method can be used by school-based SLPs to gather valid and useful information about culturally and linguistically diverse students' language for learning math. By using CBLA, SLPs can help modify curricular tasks in broader contexts in an effort to make math, including high-level math, "accessible and achievable for all" students (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2017). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language sample analysis (LSA) is often recommended as a way to minimize assessment bias for children who speak African American English (AAE). Unfortunately, speechlanguage pathologists (SLPs) continue to face clinical realities that prevent them from conducting a bias-free LSA. In this article, we review some of these clinical realities clinicians face when using a features-based list as a resource when analyzing language samples of AAE-speaking children. An alternative approach, patterns- and systems-based perspective, will be reviewed. In addition, some case examples will be offered to demonstrate the potential of using a patterns- and systems-based approach when analyzing language samples of AAE-speaking children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]