Sentence Recall by Children With SLI Across Two Nonmainstream Dialects of English.
OBJECTIVE
The inability to accurately recall sentences has proven to be a clinical marker of specific language impairment (SLI); this task yields moderate-to-high levels of sensitivity and specificity. However, it is not yet known if these results hold for speakers of dialects whose nonmainstream grammatical productions overlap with those that are produced at high rates by children with SLI.


METHODS
Using matched groups of 70 African American English speakers and 36 Southern White English speakers and dialect-strategic scoring, we examined children's sentence recall abilities as a function of their dialect and clinical status (SLI vs. typically developing [TD]).


RESULTS
For both dialects, the SLI group earned lower sentence recall scores than the TD group with sensitivity and specificity values ranging from .80 to .94, depending on the analysis. Children with SLI, as compared with TD controls, manifested lower levels of verbatim recall, more ungrammatical recalls when the recall was not exact, and higher levels of error on targeted functional categories, especially those marking tense.


CONCLUSIONS
When matched groups are examined and dialect-strategic scoring is used, sentence recall yields moderate-to-high levels of diagnostic accuracy to identify SLI within speakers of nonmainstream dialects of English.
Janna B
JB
Oetting
Janet L
JL
McDonald
Christy M
CM
Seidel
Michael
M
Hegarty
D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013067:Speech Perception; D044465:White People