A comparative study of language deficits of reservation and urban Indian children

• Main Author: Pearce, Lezlie Kaye
• Format: Others
• Published: PDXScholar 1978
• Subjects: Children > Language; Language arts (Primary); Indian children > North America; Indigenous Studies; Speech Pathology and Audiology
• Online Access: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2831; https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3836&context=open_access_etds

This study sought to determine if there are any differences in an analysis of language samples between urban Indian, reservation Indian, and urban White first-grade children. The Mean Length of Response (MLR) (Templin, 1957), Developmental Sentence Score (DSS) (Lee, 1974), and individual DSS items were used to analyze language used by the three groups of children. The study involved thirty-nine children, thirteen children in each group, between the ages of six years, six months, and seven years, four months. All subjects were screened to determine grade, residency, Indian blood, speech, language, hearing, and physical status. Testing for hearing vocabulary was performed at the beginning of the testing situation to determine eligibility for the study.