Racial Identity Perception, Social Affiliation, and Sentence Repetition in Children

Area of Science:

• Child language development
• Sociolinguistics
• Speech-language pathology

Background:

• Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) utilize sentence repetition (SR) tasks for language disorder screening in children.
• The impact of sociolinguistic factors, such as talker race and perceived affiliation, on children's SR performance is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how talker race and perceived social affiliation influence sentence repetition (SR) task performance in children.
• To examine if a match between a child's racial identity and the talker's race affects SR accuracy.

Main Methods:

• 134 children aged 4–8 years completed an SR task with prompts from Black, East Asian, and White talkers.
• Children also answered questions about their perceived social affiliation with each talker.
• Generalized logit mixed-effects models analyzed the relationship between age, racial identity match, social affiliation, and SR accuracy.

Main Results:

• Overall SR accuracy was 67%.
• Black and East Asian talkers elicited more accurate SR compared to White talkers.
• A racial match between the child and talker was associated with decreased SR scores; social affiliation did not significantly impact SR.

Conclusions:

• Talker race can significantly influence SR task outcomes, suggesting potential clinical implications for assessment.
• Further research with diverse child and talker samples is necessary to confirm the effect of racial match/mismatch on SR accuracy.