Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LINGUISTIC ILLUSIONS (Linguistic Illusions in Children with Down Syndrome, Specific Language Impairment and Typical Language Development)

Teaser

The ‘Linguistic Illusions’ project focuses on the linguistic development of Southern African American Vernacular English-speaking (AAVE) and Southern English-speaking (SE) children between the ages of 2 and 13 with either typical language development (TLD) or Specific...

Summary

The ‘Linguistic Illusions’ project focuses on the linguistic development of Southern African American Vernacular English-speaking (AAVE) and Southern English-speaking (SE) children between the ages of 2 and 13 with either typical language development (TLD) or Specific Language Impairment (SLI), as well as children, adolescents and adults with Down syndrome (DS) starting at age 4. The atypical groups (SLI and DS) are investigated from the perspective of a clinical group, thereby tying in with educational concerns of the State of Mississippi. The AAVE and SE varieties have been socially stigmatized, despite previous work showing that what is often misperceived as lack of grammatical knowledge, especially the reduction of overt inflection when compared to Mainstream American English (MAE), is in fact a characteristic of the varieties (MAE: John wants cake. vs. AAVE: John want cake). Similar characteristics have also been reported for DS and SLI.

This project makes numerous contributions on a linguistic, methodological, clinical, and social-outreach level. It enables us to clarify which seemingly grammatical differences between what is intended/expected and what is actually produced are due to differences in the variation of English our participants are speaking and which are grammatical errors, which, in turn, prevents misdiagnosis and facilitates early diagnosis and intervention. Results from this study can assist with social inclusion of children with DS and other language disabilities in schools attended by their peers with TLD, as well as AAVE-speaking children, given that AAVE is a socially stigmatized variety. Our numerous outreach initiatives with public events, media coverage, and educational workshops for the public also help improve the public’s opinion on individuals with language disorders as well as the grammatical standing of dialects.

The main research objective of this project is to provide the first comparative examination of the acquisition of all grammatical domains (phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, etc.) of SE and AAVE as well as cross-domain interactions across them in the 3 populations we set out to examine. Empirically, we aim to achieve an unbiased description of the data for a more inclusive analysis, by eliminating external factors that may be (un)related to a grammatical phenomenon or dialectal particularities. Our second empirical objective concerns the formulation of a developmental trajectory (DT) (i.e. the course of development with various grammatical elements) for the 3 populations, which will help determine if a child’s development is as expected, based on the population, age and linguistic variation, or if and in what way it deviates. Our clinical objective is to use the DT as a guide to provide a speedier and more targeted diagnosis and create better-informed intervention plans.

Work performed

The MSC Global Fellow prepared a detailed Customised Career Development Plan and secured Ethics approvals from the University of Mississippi and the University of Cambridge. She constructed all documents related to recruiting participants and designed customised experiments to include characteristics of the 2 English varieties under investigation. Furthermore, she conducted pilot studies to test the experimental material. Public and private schools and DS associations were contacted and were supplied with information packages for parents. 25 Research Assistants (RAs) were recruited to help with data collection and data entry. Despite complications which caused numerous delays, she was still able to successfully complete data collection in a timely manner. Data entry and credibility/reliability check for all collected data were pursued alongside data collection to ensure immediate accessibility to the data for analysis. Preliminary results show significant differences across the 3 populations (TLD, SLI, DS) but does not necessarily support that language disorder correlates with language variation. They also reveal unexpectedly high rates of risk for a language disorder. Our next step is to determine what drives this phenomenon. Our commitment to public engagement and outreach has also been fulfilled (at least 14 activities over the past 2 years), with participation in public events, media coverage, and the organization of an educational workshop which covered issues related to health, education, language and behaviour of individuals with DS.

Final results

Though a growing body of literature on the specific characteristics of SE and AAVE is available, minimal or no research exists on the linguistic development of especially children with SLI or DS. ‘Linguistic Illusions’ documents the developmental stages they undergo while acquiring the 2 varieties, but most importantly provides us with an invaluable opportunity to answer if any and what factors contribute to the surprisingly high rates of language disorder we have uncovered and, together with the implementation of early education and early intervention plans, suggest a more efficient approach to address this critical problem.

Based on a preliminary analysis of our data we anticipate evidently higher rates of language difficulties with our DS and SLI groups, as opposed to our TLD groups, but also an unexpectedly high risk for a language disorder for undiagnosed TLD across both dialectal variations. We also expect that some children might have been either erroneously flagged or failed to be diagnosed as having a language disorder, based on external factors that relate to (a) overgeneralizing or confusing that some characteristics in the child’s variety of English match those used to diagnose a language disability, as opposed to being part of their variety of English, (b) clinicians and educators lacking proper training and (c) insufficient or inappropriate testing tools/materials. We also anticipate that the DTs for SE and AAVE will be parallel to those of MAE in terms of core grammatical elements.

We anticipate that the current study will have an invaluable impact on the process of diagnosis and treatment. In fact, the large number of children who participated in the study had the unique, for States like Mississippi, opportunity to undergo a very thorough evaluation of their language skills. Moreover, establishing which seemingly grammatical differences between (a) what is intended/expected and (b) what is actually produced are due to differences in the variety of English our participants are speaking and which are due to a language impairment will prevent over- or under-diagnosis and assist with more efficient intervention plans. The State of Mississippi is ranked amongst the lowest in terms of education and academic achievement. Knowing the true nature of the problem will help clarify what type of reformations are needed within the educational and diagnostic system to promote more efficient learning and better academic performance for the 2 varieties of English and other languages spoken across Europe and beyond. Publicising the results of this study and educating the public as well as academic communities of the true abilities and restrictions these children face will not only help with their acceptance, eliminate urban myths and prevent marginalisation, but it will also open up new opportunities of education, employment and socialisation. The outreach initiatives we have pursed thus far, serve as a precursor of the greater impact this study has to the local community and beyond.

Website & more info

More info: https://research.biolinguistics.eu/CGDS-MS/index.html.