Assessing for Developmental Language Disorder in the Context of African American English
EBP Briefs
Francois, I., Lapka, S., et al. (2023).
EBP Briefs, 16(2), 1-8.
This systematic review compares the utility of two measures of child morphosyntax, the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) and the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn), for identifying developmental language disorders in preschool and early elementary school students (Pre-K to 2nd grade) who are native speakers of African American English (AAE).
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Not stated
Original, peer-reviewed studies (not further specified)
3
Three studies comparing the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) to the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) found that both measures are dialect-fair tools for assessing developmental language disorder (DLD) in young children who speak AAE. The included studies reported the following results:<br />
<ul>
<li>One study found the IPSyn to be dialect-neutral, but not clinically sensitive.</li>
<li>One study found that 82% of AAE-speaking children with DLD scored below average on the DSS variant, the Black English Sentence Scoring (BESS).</li>
<li>One study found that the IPSyn correctly identified 33% of AAE-speaking children with DLD, while the DSS correctly identified 73%.</li>
</ul>
The authors conclude that the DSS demonstrated greater diagnostic accuracy overall, and the DSS adjustment, the BESS, added greater diagnostic accuracy.
