Tempii B. Champion

“A Matter of Vocabulary” Performances of Low-Income African American Head Start Children on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—III

Forty-nine 3- to 5-year-old African American children enrolled in Head Start were assessed using the third edition of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn & Dunn, 1997). Their mean score (86.84, SD = 10.96) was significantly lower than the mean for the normative sample, despite the fact that the tests normative sample included minority children. An item analysis revealed that few items were systematically missed by most children. Instead, performance seemed reflective of socioeconomic and/or ethnic patterns of vocabulary usage. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.

“Tell me somethin' good”: A description of narrative structures among African American children

Abstract The purpose of the research reported in this article was to examine narrative structures among African American children. Narratives were elicited from 15 African American children between the ages of six to ten years from a predominantly African American community in the Northeastern United States. Narratives were analyzed using Highpoint analysis and an alternate set analyses such as Thematic analysis, comparison to traditional West African narrative structures and an Interactional Sociolinguistic analysis. The results suggested that the children in this study produced a repertoire of narrative structures. In addition, the results suggested that prompts and cultural background might influence the narrative structures produced by the children in the study.

Telling the Unknown Story Complex and Explicit Narration by African American Preadolescents—Preliminary Examination of Gender and Socioeconomic Issues

Abstract This article investigates the oral personal narration of 16 African American children, 8 males and 8 females. Half of the 16 children were from a low socioeconomic status (SES) and half from a middle SES background. Narratives were analyzed using dependency analysis and yielded the following measures: fully implicit propositions, partially implicit propositions, explicit propositions, repeated propositions, internal corrections, and false starts, the highest level of proposition, and reported speech. There was a main effect of gender and SES on the highest level of proposition articulated. Girls achieved a significantly higher level of proposition than did boys, indicating a tendency to greater elaboration in their discourses. Of greatest interest was the finding that low SES children achieved a significantly higher level of proposition than did middle SES children.

A Matter of Vocabulary II: Low-Income African American Children’s Performance on the Expressive Vocabulary Test

The Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT) has recently been found culturally fair for an economically mixed sample of African American children, and others have argued that it is fairer for such participants than the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test— III (PPVT-III). In this study, the authors sought to replicate these findings with an exclusively low-income group in the southeastern United States and to analyze errors. An African American graduate student administered the EVT and the PPVT-III to 53 African American children ages 5 years 4 months to 12 years 3 months (kindergarten through fourth grade) receiving free lunch. Contrary to prior research, children performed significantly below the norm on both the EVT and the PPVT-III. Neither test seemed easier. An item analysis of 785 errors revealed that approximately 75% were strong associates of target words and/or accurate descriptions of EVT pictures. African American children from low-income backgrounds appear to interpret EVT instructions differently from the official instructions, which led to compromised performance.

The Whole World Could Hear: The Structure of Haitian-American Children's Narratives

The ability to tell personal narrative is an important aspect of developing communicative competence, as well as predictive of literacy achievement. Although cultural differences in narrative structure have been amply documented, little or no such information exists for many cultures, including Haitian. Personal narratives were collected from 10 Haitian-American children (7 years, 6 months) and analyzed using three different systems: high point analysis, story grammar, and Africanist analysis, which was specifically developed for this project. Although some narratives could be appreciated using high point and story grammar analyses, the Africanist approach was best suited to describing the narratives of Haitian-American children.

Phonological Development of Monolingual Haitian Creole-Speaking Preschool Children.

This study provides preliminary data on the phonological development of Haitian Creole–Speaking children. The purpose of this study is to determine phonological acquisition in the speech of normally developing monolingual Haitian Creole–Speaking preschoolers, ages 2 to 4. Speech samples were collected cross-sectionally from 12 Haitian children divided into three age groups. Participants’ utterances were recorded from spontaneous and/or imitative productions of target words. Data were analyzed through a relational analysis to determine phonemic inventories occurring in each age group’s speech. A gradual increase in speech sound inventories was observed from 2 to 4 years of age. Results indicate that phonological development in Haitian Creole–Speaking children was influenced by both language-universal patterns and language-specific patterns. In conclusion, data obtained on the phonological development of monolingual Haitian Creole preschoolers can provide insight to speech language pathologists during the clinical assessment and intervention process of this population.

Performative Features in Adults' Haitian Creole Narratives

This study evaluated structures and patterns of the narrative performance from 10 native Haitian adults (5 women and 5 men). Haitian Creole narratives were (a) analyzed and coded for nine West African features (repetition, parallelism, detailing, tonality, ideophone, digression, imagery, allusion, and symbolism) and (b) analyzed for nonverbal behaviors associated with speech using five gesticulation characteristics (hand, arm, feet, head movements, and facial expressions). Results suggested that Haitian Creole narratives most frequently utilized three patterns of West African storytelling features: tonality, repetition, and detailing.