Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Linguistics Section, School for African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2021 Sep 2;35(9):891-908. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2020.1839968. Epub 2020 Nov 3.
Children with LI are at a disadvantage because they typically have smaller vocabularies than their TD peers. However, children from low-SES households often also have smaller vocabularies and can thus be misdiagnosed with LI. The purpose of this study was to compare the fast-mapping (FM) skills of 3 groups of 4- to 9-year-olds: typically developing (TD) children with low socioeconomic status (SES) and mid SES, and mid-SES children with language impairment (LI), to ascertain whether FM is affected by SES. The FM items of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation were administered to 253 TD mid-SES children, 75 TD low-SES children, and 36 children with LI. On FM with novel verbs, the TD groups differed significantly ( = .001) as did the TD mid-SES and LI groups ( = .046), but not the TD low-SES and LI groups ( = 1.00). On a comparable task with real verbs, the TD mid-SES group also differed significantly from the TD low-SES ( < .001) and LI group ( = .018), with no significant difference between the latter two groups ( = 1.00). FM has been proposed as a non-SES-sensitive measure but, unlike previous studies, we found FM to be affected by SES, rendering it an insufficiently unbiased measure for our sample of children. Further thought should be given to measures that can successfully differentiate between children with LI, and children from low-SES backgrounds, possibly rendering scores adjusted for SES, so that targeted intervention can be offered.
患有语言障碍（LI）的儿童处于不利地位，因为他们的词汇量通常比其正常发展（TD）的同龄人小。然而，来自低收入家庭的儿童词汇量通常也较小，因此可能会被误诊为 LI。本研究的目的是比较三组 4 至 9 岁儿童的快速映射（FM）技能：来自低收入家庭（SES）和中 SES 的正常发育（TD）儿童，以及中 SES 的语言障碍（LI）儿童，以确定 FM 是否受到 SES 的影响。语言变异诊断评估的 FM 项目对 253 名 TD 中 SES 儿童、75 名 TD 低 SES 儿童和 36 名语言障碍儿童进行了测试。在新颖动词的 FM 中，TD 组差异显著（= 0.001），TD 中 SES 和 LI 组也存在显著差异（= 0.046），但 TD 低 SES 和 LI 组没有显著差异（= 1.00）。在一个具有真实动词的可比任务中，TD 中 SES 组也与 TD 低 SES 组（< 0.001）和 LI 组（= 0.018）存在显著差异，后两组之间没有显著差异（= 1.00）。FM 已被提议作为一种非 SES 敏感的测量方法，但与以前的研究不同，我们发现 FM 受到 SES 的影响，使其成为我们样本中儿童的一个不够公正的测量方法。应进一步考虑可以成功区分语言障碍儿童和来自低收入家庭背景的儿童的测量方法，可能需要调整 SES 得分，以便提供有针对性的干预。
