This research examined how linguistic differences between African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) impact how children process sentences and learn new information. The central hypothesis of this dissertation is that these linguistic differences adversely impact how AAE-speaking children use contrastive inflectional verb…

Clinical Question: Among school-age children who speak AAE (P), does the use of dialect scoring modifications (I), when compared to traditional scoring methods (C), yield more reliable identification of true language disorders (O)? Method: Structured Review. Study Sources: Google Scholar and ASHAWire. Search Terms: (1) "dialect" OR…

Texted English is a hybrid, technology-based language derived from standard English modified to facilitate ease of communication via instant and text messaging. We compared semantic processing of texted and standard English sentences by recording event-related potentials in a classic semantic incongruity paradigm designed to elicit an N400 effect.…

Presents evidence against the "deficit" interpretation of Black dialect and argues instead for at least one version of the "difference" hypothesis. (FL)

A study investigated the degree to which the pronunciation of English words in the child's home environment affected the acquisition or discrimination of phonological and orthographic correspondences of standard written English. Subjects were low-socioeconomic-status, inner-city African American kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students, who…