Transcription Decisions of Conjoined Independent Clauses Are Equitable Across Dialects but Impact Measurement Outcomes.
Janna B Oetting, Tahmineh Maleki
PMID 38758707WHAT IT FOUND
Separating conjoined clauses into single utterances reduces MLU scores, hiding grammar differences between children with and without DLD.
This practice affects all dialects equally, so it is not inequitable, but it makes clinical status and age effects harder to detect.
Key findings
01The rate at which children conjoined independent clauses differed by clinical status and age but not by dialect (African American English vs. Southern White English).
02Separating conjoined independent clauses into single utterances reduced MLU scores, with the reduction being larger for the TD6 group than for the DLD and TD4 groups.
03Measures of clausal coordination showed small effect sizes and low diagnostic accuracy (65%), indicating this measure cannot be used in isolation to identify DLD.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was limited to children aged 3 to 6 years, so findings may not generalize to school-age children or adolescents. The dialects studied were specific to the Southern United States (African American English and Southern White English); results may not apply to other dialects or regions. Language samples were elicited through play; different contexts like narration or persuasion might yield different results. The diagnostic accuracy of clausal coordination alone was low (65%), meaning it is not a standalone tool for identifying DLD.
Declared interests
The data were collected with support from National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Grants DC03609 and DC009811.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that separating conjoined clauses is a neutral transcription choice. While it does not bias results against a specific dialect, it significantly reduces MLU scores in a way that hides the grammatical gap between children with DLD and their typically developing peers.