UH Faculty, Staff, and Student Works
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Browsing UH Faculty, Staff, and Student Works by Department "Communication Sciences and Disorders"
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Item Assessing for Developmental Language Disorder in the Context of African American English(Pearson Clinical Assessments, 2023) Francois, Isabelle; Lapka, Stefanie; Berstein Ratner, Nan; Mills, Monique T.Structured Abstract. Clinical Question: For young AAE speakers (P), how useful is the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) compared with Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) in identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in the presence of African American English (AAE) ? Method: Structured Review. Study Sources: PsycInfo®, Education Source, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC), PubMed, Scopus, ASHAWire . Search Terms: (1) African American English (including African American Language AND African American Vernacular English AND Black English AND AAE AND AAVE), (2) child, AND (3) language assessment (including language testing AND speech evaluation). Number of Included Studies: 3. Primary Results: DSS and IPSyn appear to be dialect-neutral measures of morphosyntax in young AAE speakers DSS was better able to detect morphosyntactic differences between children with typical language development (TLD) and children with DLD. DSS and its variant, Black English Sentence Scoring (BESS), appear to be clinically useful language sampling analysis tools. Conclusions: Available evidence suggests that DSS is a more useful clinical tool over IPSyn for evaluating DLD within the context of AAE because it provides the opportunity to evaluate mastery and accuracy of grammatical features and not only the presence of structures.Item The Effects of Visual Stimuli on the Spoken Narrative Performance of School-Age African American Children, with Erratum(Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2015-10-01) Mills, Monique T.Purpose. This study investigated the fictional narrative performance of school-age African American children across 3 elicitation contexts that differed in the type of visual stimulus presented. Method. A total of 54 children in Grades 2 through 5 produced narratives across 3 different visual conditions: no visual, picture sequence, and single picture. Narratives were examined for visual condition differences in expressive elaboration rate, number of different word roots (NDW) rate, mean length of utterance in words, and dialect density. The relationship between diagnostic risk for language impairment and narrative variables was explored. Results. Expressive elaboration rate and mean length of utterance in words were higher in the no-visual condition than in either the picture-sequence or the single-picture conditions. NDW rate was higher in the no-visual and picture-sequence conditions than in the single-picture condition. Dialect density performance across visual context depended on the child's grade, so that younger children produced a higher rate of African American English in the no-visual condition than did older children. Diagnostic risk was related to NDW rate and dialect density measure. Conclusion. The results suggest the need for narrative elicitation contexts that include verbal as well as visual tasks to fully describe the narrative performance of school-age African American children with typical development. ---Erratum--- In the original article, the text in the Abstract on p. 337 reads, “Dialect density performance across visual context depended on the child's grade, so that younger children produced a higher rate of African American English in the no-visual condition than did older children. Diagnostic risk was related to NDW rate and dialect density measure.” The text should have stated, “African American English production across visual context depended on the child's grade, such that younger children produced a lower rate of AAE in the picture sequence condition than did older children. Diagnostic risk was related with NDW rate but unrelated with dialect density measure.” In addition, on p. 346, the original text reads, “As shown in Table 2, these children produced DDM rates that were similar in the no-visual (M = 0.02, SD = 0.01), picture-sequence (M = 0.03, SD = 0.02), and single-picture (M = 0.03, SD = 0.02) conditions.” For clarity, the text should have stated, “As shown in Table 2, older children produced DDM rates that were similar in the no-visual (M = 0.02, SD = 0.01), picture-sequence (M = 0.03, SD = 0.02), and single-picture (M = 0.03, SD = 0.02) conditions.” We sincerely apologize for this error.Item Exploratory examination of speech disfluencies in spoken narrative samples of school-age bidialectal children(American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2022) Johnson, Kia; Mills, Monique T.Purpose: This study examined the relationship between school-age children’s speech disfluencies and the use of and variation of Mainstream American English (MAE) and African American English (AAE). Given that bilingual children may present with notably more speech disfluencies than monolingual children (Byrd, Bedore, et al., 2015), it was hypothesized that bidialectal speaking children (i.e., those that use both MAE and AAE) may exhibit higher speech disfluencies, as compared to children who speak mainly MAE and those who mainly speak AAE. It was also hypothesized that bidialectal speaking children would exhibit a greater variety of speech disfluency types when compared to the other two dialect groups (i.e., MAE and AAE). Method: School-age children (n = 61) with typical development and fluency were classified into three dialect groups: MAE speakers (n = 21), bidialectal MAE-AAE speakers (n = 11), and AAE speakers (n = 29). Tell-retell narrative samples were elicited from each participant using a wordless picture book. Speech disfluencies exhibited during these narrative samples were examined for frequency of stuttering-like and nonstuttering-like speech disfluencies and type of speech disfluency. Results: Findings indicated that bidialectal speaking children do not present with a higher frequency of speech disfluencies when compared to children who speak MAE and children who speak AAE. Additionally, there were no differences in the types of speech disfluencies exhibited by the different dialect groups. Conclusions: Unexpected findings of the current study nullify both hypotheses and suggest that bidialectalism, in comparison to bilingualism, has less of an impact on speech fluency. Findings provide evidence that bidialectal speaking children are not at an increased risk for stuttering or a misdiagnosis of stuttering. Clinically, these preliminary findings provide some scientific validity and specification to the appropriateness of using already established diagnostic criteria commonly used for stuttering with dialect speakers.Item Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice(Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2021) Mills, MoniquePurpose: African American English (AAE) speakers often face mismatches between home language and school language, coupled with negative attitudes toward AAE in the classroom. This forum, Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice, will help researchers, parents, and school-based practitioners communicate in ways that are synergistic, collaborative, and transparent to improve educational outcomes of AAE speakers. Method: The forum includes a tutorial offering readers instructions on how to engage in community-based participatory research (Holt, 2021). Through two clinical focus articles, readers will recognize how AAE develops during the preschool years and is expressed across various linguistic contexts and elicitation tasks (Newkirk-Turner& Green, 2021) and identify markers of developmental language disorder within AAE from language samples analyzed in Computerized Language Analysis (Overton et al., 2021). Seven empirical articles employ such designs as quantitative (Byrd & Brown, 2021; Diehm & Hendricks, 2021; Hendricks & Jimenez, 2021; Maher et al., 2021; Mahurin-Smith et al., 2021), qualitative (Hamilton & DeThorne, 2021), and mixed methods (Mills et al., 2021). These articles will help readers identify ways in which AAE affects how teachers view its speakers’ language skills and communicative practices and relates to its speakers’ literacy outcomes. Conclusion: The goal of the forum is to make a lasting contribution to the discipline with a concentrated focus on how to assess and address communicative variation in the U.S. classroom.Item Implementing Strength-Based Dialogue to Reframe Clinical Education and Community Engagement(Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 2023) Mills, Monique T.Purpose: Healthcare professionals want to solve problems. When health disparities are observed, the solution often rests on expanding access to clinical services. But what are the varied paths that persons with communication disorders might take to access speech, language, and hearing care? Where are these paths successful and where does a well-intended initiative have an absent or limited effect in altering disparities? Multiple, complex factors affect access to healthcare in underserved communities. However, current practice tends to frame the goals and metrics of outreach programs in terms of access to healthcare services, which risks privileging the perspective of the providers who want to increase the volume of services accessed over the voices of the community members for whom access to healthcare is only part of the larger course of their lives. Solutions that do not reflect those community strengths outside the service provision framework likely yield minimal impact on quality of life, since the community members are less likely to fully embrace the solution. Method: In this clinical forum, we describe a community-informed strengths-based framework for clinicians and clinical researchers whose work is designed to reach underserved communities by employing mutual trust, empathy, active listening, and patient-centered care planning. Through case scenarios we exemplify key tenets of the framework. Conclusion: The community-informed strengths-based framework detailed in this clinical forum supports a paradigm shift from a biomedically-informed strengths-based framework to a model of healthcare service provision that focuses on individual or community strengths. Eliciting guidance from those receiving care and framing the totality of encounters in terms of the process of responding to community strengths can build a collaborative and sustainable path forward toward achieving health goals. Keywords: strengths-based service delivery, health outcomes, developmental language disorder, cognitive decline, community health workers, clinical educationItem Perceptions of Black Children’s Narrative Language: A Mixed-Methods Study(Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 2021-01) Mills, Monique; Moore, Leslie C.; Chang, Rong; Kim, Somin; Frick, BethanyPurpose: In this mixed-methods study, we address two aims. First, we examine the impact of language variation on the ratings of children’s narrative language. Secondly, we identify participants’ ideologies related to narrative language and language variation. Method: 40 adults listened to and rated six Black second-grade children on the quality of 12 narratives (six fictional, six personal). Adults then completed a quantitative survey and participated in a qualitative interview. Results: Findings indicated that adults rated students with less variation from mainstream American English (MAE) more highly than students with greater variation from MAE for fictional narratives but not for personal narratives. Personal narratives tended to be evaluated more favorably by parents than teachers. Black raters tended to assign higher ratings of narrative quality than did White raters. Thematic analysis and conversation analysis of qualitative interviews supported quantitative findings and provided pertinent information about participants’ beliefs. Conclusion: Taken together, quantitative and qualitative results point to a shared language ideology among adult raters of variation from MAE being more acceptable in informal contexts, such as telling a story of personal experience, and less acceptable in more formal contexts, such as narrating a fictional story prompted by a picture sequence.Item Rare Vocabulary Production in School-age Narrators from Low-income Communities(2021-01) Mahurin-Smith, Jamie; Mills, Monique; Chang, RongPurpose: This study was designed to assess the utility of a tool for automated analysis of rare vocabulary use in the spoken narratives of a group of school-age children from low-income communities. Method: We evaluated personal and fictional narratives from 76 school-age children from lowincome communities (mean age = 9;3). We analyzed children's use of rare vocabulary in their narratives, with the goal of evaluating relationships among rare vocabulary use, performance on standardized language tests, language sample measures, sex, and use of African American English (AAE). Results: Use of rare vocabulary in school-age children is robustly correlated with established language sample measures. Male sex was also significantly associated with more frequent rare vocabulary use. There was no association between rare vocabulary use and use of AAE. Discussion: Evaluation of rare vocabulary use in school-age children may be a culturally fair assessment strategy that aligns well with existing language sample measures.