Working Memory Performance in Children with and without SLI in Two Nonmainstream Dialects of English

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Assessing children with specific language impairment (SLI) requires linguistically unbiased tools.
• Nonmainstream dialects may affect performance on cognitive tasks, potentially confounding results.
• Previous research has not fully explored dialectal influences on working memory measures in children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if a working memory task is linguistically unbiased across African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) dialects.
• To examine if working memory performance differentiates children with and without SLI across dialects.
• To investigate the impact of nonmainstream dialect density on working memory measures.

Main Methods:

• A size judgment working memory task was administered to 53 kindergarteners with SLI and 53 controls.
• Participants included speakers of AAE and SWE.
• Standardized tests of syntax, vocabulary, intelligence, and dialect density were also administered.

Main Results:

• Children with SLI performed significantly worse on the working memory task and made more errors than controls across both dialects.
• Working memory performance correlated with standardized language test scores and dialect density.
• After controlling for dialect density, the working memory task continued to differentiate between children with and without SLI and correlated with syntax measures.

Conclusions:

• Working memory tasks can distinguish children with and without SLI and relate to syntactic abilities across dialects.
• The correlation between working memory span and dialect density suggests potential linguistic bias in processing-based tasks.
• Further research is needed to fully understand the relationship between nonmainstream dialects and working memory assessment.