Division of Research
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/16446
Browse
Browsing Division of Research by Subject "African American children"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Are Fast Food Menus Contributing to Overweight Children?(2007-01) Stutts, Mary Ann; Smith, Karen H.Health officials have become alarmed by the rapid rise in obesity among American children. Predictions are that 2010, almost 20% of children in the United States will be overweight. Among Mexican American and African American youth, the rates are around 40%. If this overweight segment of society does not reverse itself, we will see a continued increase in health problems such as Type II diabetes and heart disease in children. Because of the importance of this problem an experiment was designed to test whether providing calorie and fat content information or a heart symbol denoting healthier choices to children ages 6-1l will favorably affect their meal choices at fast food restaurants. Children (240) were recruited through the Girl and Boy Scouts. The experiment consisted of three conditions: (1) no nutrition information, (2) calorie and fat content next to menu items, and (3) a heart- healthy symbol next to healthy items. Tri-fold poster boards were developed based on menu boards at McDonald's and Wendy's and each child was shown a menu board from each restaurant and asked to make a meal selection. Additional data was collected via child and parent questionnaires. Preliminary results from the study include: (1) many children want to eat healthy, (2) females made healthier choices than males, (3) nutrition information can affect behavior, and (4) pictorial information may be more effective for children than verbal information.Item Untitled(2007-01) Burns, Frances A.This preliminary study is an attempt to further define the parameters for judging the progress of child African American English (AAE) speakers with specific language impairment in treatment targeting auxiliary is/are/was, and 3rd person singular's . The specific aims of the proposed project are to 1) assess the degree of validity for the current grammatical morpheme probes based on AAE and General American English (GAE) participant response processes and 2) develop and field test grammatical morpheme probes that are specific to morpho-syntactic properties of AAE. Participants were monolingual- English speaking preschoolers between the ages of 5;0 and 6;0. Other criteria for inclusion in the study are typically-developing (TD) language skills, cognitive levels within the normal range, passing a hearing screening at 20 dB HL, and no neurological or emotional concerns based on teacher report. Fifteen participants were recruited from Luling ISD. All participants will receive a language screening in order to document typical development. A set of tasks were used to elicit the children's use of the above grammatical morphemes. Probe responses were then transcribed and analyzed for accuracy of the target morphemes based on the general American English dialect. Language and narrative samples were also obtained in order to document participants' dialect status. Results show that the current grammatical morphemes are appropriate for general American English speakers but may place African American English speakers at risk for misdiagnosis. More participants are being recruited, in particular African American children for further testing. New probes are being developed based on current results.