Citation

Lawson J. Early Child Res. Q. 1986; 1(4): 379-386.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0885-2006(86)90014-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Recent findings of ethnographic research conducted by Heath (1983) indicate that some children, particularly nonmainstream children, may respond to questions analogically--that is, by describing the object or event they have experienced or been exposed to in terms of their own experience, as opposed to responding referentially (i.e., by providing a specific name or label). The purpose of this study was to analyze the relative frequency of analogical responses to questions in three groups: 15 inner-city black preschoolers, 15 inner-city white preschoolers, and 15 mainstream white preschoolers. Data were gathered from the language portion of a developmental screening battery that included question-answering tasks from the Blank Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (Blank, Rose, & Berlin 1978). Analysis of the data indicated that (a) there was a significant difference in the number of analogical responses between black and white children regardless of whether the white children were inner-city or mainstream and (b) the frequency of use of analogical responses to questions was highest among the black children participating in the study.