PROJECT SUMMARY
Gaps in academic achievement lead to gross racial disparities in mental health, physical health,
and substance use and abuse and compound inequalities, threatening individual as well as
social and national economic well-being. Black children represent one group at substantial risk
for educational underachievement due to dialect mismatch effects that can hamper reading
performance: Ninety percent Black children speak African American English (AAE) as their
primary dialect, yet the learning environment in the school is that of Mainstream American
English (MAE). Dialect mismatch effects have been tested using offline measures of language
production and comprehension in Black children, ages 5- to 8 years, when reading skills are
coming online. However, language production measures cannot expose subtle interruptions in
AAE speakers’ comprehension as they learn in MAE. Thus, there is a critical need for measures
sensitive to moment-by-moment language processing. In the absence of such methods, the
promise of understanding potential educational costs of dialect mismatch effects will likely
remain elusive.
Our central hypothesis is that school-aged Black children with stronger language skills will be
sensitive to violations of phonology and grammar in AAE and MAE, but that school-age children
with weaker language skills will show little sensitivity to such violations. Our hypothesis has
been formulated based on extant research linking children’s processing speed with language
ability. Further, our own pilot data, conducted with White speakers of MAE, demonstrated
statistically significant differences in time spent looking at stimuli when language input does or
does not contain linguistic violations. We plan to attain the overall objective by pursing the
following specific aims: (1) to apply eye-tracking to evaluate sensitivities to violations of
phonology and grammar in both MAE and AAE, in 7-year-old Black children; and (2) to
determine how well eye-tracking profiles align with measures of language production commonly
used in clinical practice.
At the completion of the proposed project, our expected outcomes are to have identified key
dialect detection profiles of typically-developing Black children. These results will provide a
foundational evidence base on dialect detection in young Black children, supplying insights into
normative development that have potential applications to the treatment of developmental
language disorder.