TY - JOUR
T1 - Variable dialect switching among African American children: inferences about working memory
AU - Terry, J M
AU - Hendrick, R
AU - Evangelou, Evangelos
AU - Smith, R L
PY - 2010/10
Y1 - 2010/10
N2 - This paper presents evidence that dialect switching can pose a variable cognitive load that modulates success in verbally mediated tasks. A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo model is used to explore and confirm the hypothesis that the morphosyntactic organization of African American English (ME) has significant, variable effects on second grade African American students' performance on mathematical reasoning tests conducted orally in Mainstream American English (MAE). These effects correlate with students' productions of AAE. Neither measures of spatial reasoning nor span measures of children's working memory correlated with this aspect of test performance, but certain types of representational mismatches did. These findings are consistent with other work suggesting that mathematical reasoning and language draw from a common working memory store, and that processing difficulties are linked to manipulating representations rather than limits on storage capacity.
AB - This paper presents evidence that dialect switching can pose a variable cognitive load that modulates success in verbally mediated tasks. A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo model is used to explore and confirm the hypothesis that the morphosyntactic organization of African American English (ME) has significant, variable effects on second grade African American students' performance on mathematical reasoning tests conducted orally in Mainstream American English (MAE). These effects correlate with students' productions of AAE. Neither measures of spatial reasoning nor span measures of children's working memory correlated with this aspect of test performance, but certain types of representational mismatches did. These findings are consistent with other work suggesting that mathematical reasoning and language draw from a common working memory store, and that processing difficulties are linked to manipulating representations rather than limits on storage capacity.
KW - working memory
KW - Markov Chain Monte Carlo model
KW - dialect switching
KW - African American English
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77955419858&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010.04.013
U2 - 10.1016/j.lingua.2010.04.013
DO - 10.1016/j.lingua.2010.04.013
M3 - Article
SN - 0024-3841
VL - 120
SP - 2463
EP - 2475
JO - Lingua
JF - Lingua
IS - 10
ER -