Professional judgments about the relationship between speech and intelligence in African American preschoolers

This study investigated listener judgments of the speech of African American preschoolers. Forty-four judges (Head Start teaching staff = 18, pediatricians = 15, and speech-language pathologists = 11) were asked to watch and listen to a video tape of six children and to judge each child's speech and intelligence. Head Start teaching staff and pediatricians were both likely to perceive that speech and intelligence were related, although the two groups held differing views about the nature of that relationship. Speech-language pathologists were likely to perceive speech as being relatively independent of intelligence.