Characterizing Speech Sound Productions in Bilingual Speakers of Jamaican Creole and English: Application of Durational Acoustic Methods

León, Michelle; Washington, Karla N.; McKenna, Victoria S.; Crowe, Kathryn; Fritz, Kristina; Boyce, Suzanne

doi:10.1044/2022_jslhr-22-00304

Cited by 4 publications

References 63 publications

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Supporting Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices With Preschoolers: Guidance From Methods in the Jamaican Context

Washington,

Karem,

Kokotek

et al. 2023

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: There is a shortage of available methods to accurately inform the developmental status of children whose cultural and linguistic backgrounds vary from the mainstream. The purpose of this review article was to describe different approaches used to support the accurate characterization of speech, language, and functional communication in children speaking Jamaican Creole and English, an understudied paradigm in the speech pathology research. Method: Approaches used across four previously published studies in the Jamaican Creole Language Project are described. Participants included 3- to 6-year-old Jamaican children ( n = 98–262) and adults ( n = 15–33). Studies I and II described validation efforts about children's functional communication using the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS; speech) and the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS; speech and language). Study III described efforts to accurately characterize difference and disorder in children's expressive grammar using adapted scoring, along with adult models to contextualize child responses. Last, Study IV applied acoustic duration (e.g., whole word) and an adapted scoring protocol to inform variation in speech sound productions in the Jamaican context where a post-Creole continuum exists. Results: Studies I and II offered promising psychometric evidence about the utility of the ICS and the FOCUS. Study III revealed strong sensitivity and specificity in classifying difference and disorder using adult models. Last, in Study IV, linguistically informed acoustic analyses and an adapted protocol captured variation in speech productions better than a standard approach. Conclusions: Applying culturally responsive methods can enhance the accurate characterization of speech, language, and functional communication in Jamaican children. The innovative methods used offer a model approach that could be applied to other linguistic contexts where a mismatch exists between speech-language pathologists and their clientele.

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Supporting Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices With Preschoolers: Guidance From Methods in the Jamaican Context

Washington,

Karem,

Kokotek

et al. 2023

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Speech-Language Outcomes in the COVID-19 Milieu for Multilingual Jamaican Preschoolers and Considerations for Telepractice Assessments

Kokotek,

Washington,

Cunningham

et al. 2024

Am J Speech Lang Pathol

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to characterize the communicative participation and functional speech intelligibility (i.e., how children use communication and how well they are understood across everyday life) of typically developing (TD) bilingual Jamaican preschoolers and those with functionally defined speech sound disorders (fSSDs) in the COVID-19 milieu. Findings were also compared to an existing corpus of baseline data to document and explore differences in children's speech-language outcomes secondary to pandemic-related social restrictions. Method: Thirty bilingual Jamaican preschoolers, 21 TD and nine with fSSDs, were assessed during the pandemic via telepractice. Association and univariate mean testing were completed to characterize children's communicative participation and functional speech intelligibility. Data were then compared to an existing corpus of baseline data (collected in person between 2013 and 2019), which included direct child assessment and parent reports and consisted of TD ( n = 226) Jamaican Creole-English–speaking preschoolers and those with fSSDs ( n = 39) to compare performance profiles across data sets. All participants attended schools in Kingston, Jamaica. Results: Measures of communicative participation remained stable in the context of the COVID-19 milieu for children in the TD and fSSD groups, but functional speech intelligibility outcomes for children with fSSDs deviated between in-person findings collected from children pre-pandemic. Between-groups differences were also found on measures of speech production accuracy but were no longer significant when considering telepractice as a covariate. Conclusions: Findings from this investigation serve to characterize the communicative participation and functional speech intelligibility of TD bilingual Jamaican preschoolers and those with fSSDs in the COVID-19 milieu. By extension, the results comparing data from preschoolers collected during the pandemic to an existing corpus of baseline data from a different group of preschoolers provide critical insights about multilingual children's speech-language outcomes in the context of acutely changing environmental circumstances. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25461505

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Phonemic and pitch variability in bilingual preschoolers: A comparison of Jamaican Creole and English

Mira,

Wilkens,

Washington

et al. 2024

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

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Characterizing Speech Sound Productions in Bilingual Speakers of Jamaican Creole and English: Application of Durational Acoustic Methods

Cited by 4 publications

References 63 publications

Supporting Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices With Preschoolers: Guidance From Methods in the Jamaican Context

Supporting Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices With Preschoolers: Guidance From Methods in the Jamaican Context

Speech-Language Outcomes in the COVID-19 Milieu for Multilingual Jamaican Preschoolers and Considerations for Telepractice Assessments

Phonemic and pitch variability in bilingual preschoolers: A comparison of Jamaican Creole and English

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