Speech-Language Development

in Children Adopted from Haiti

Katherine G. Chattaway, Caroline Zmijewski, Sharon Fast, & Madeleine Reay     (Graduate Students)

Karen E. Pollock, Ph.D., R.SLP (Supervisor)

Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology, University of Alberta

 

Most research on speech and language development in internationally adopted children has focused on children adopted from Eastern Europe and China, who represent the largest groups of internationally adopted children in North America.  It is not known whether the results of these studies are generalizable to children adopted from other countries.  In Canada, adoptions from China predominate, representing over 50% of all international adoptions in 2003.  However, in Alberta, the number of adoptions from Haiti has been roughly equivalent to the number of adoptions from China since 2001 (statistics by province were not available prior to 2001).  However, there has been no research on children adopted from Haiti.  Like children from China and Eastern Europe, most children adopted from Haiti lived in orphanages prior to adoption and experience an abrupt switch in language environment at time of adoption.  But differences in quality of orphanage care, language of birth country (French or French Creole) and health status of children from Haiti might influence their English language development differently. 

This study was designed to examine the English speech and language skills in young (2 1/2 to 8 yr old) children who were adopted from Haiti as infants or toddlers.  The method was similar to that used in Roberts et al. (2005) study of preschoolers adopted from China.  Specifically, we wanted to know, “How do preschool-aged children adopted from Haiti as infants/toddlers perform on common measures of English speech and language development after one or more years of exposure to English in their permanent homes?” 

Seventeen children 10 boys, 7 girls) between 2 1/2 and 7 years of age (avg age = 4 1/2 yrs).  They had been in their permanent homes in Canada for 1 to 5 years.  Children were assessed using a battery of commonly used tests speech-language development.  In addition, each child was given a hearing screening and a recording of their spontaneous speech during a play session was recorded.  Information on adoption history, health, and general development was obtained via parent questionnaires.  Data collection is now complete, and the analysis of test results is underway.  According to the standardized test results, only 3 (18%) of the children scored below average on 2 or more tests.  Interestingly, 5 (29%) of the children scored above average on 2 or more tests.  Gender, age at time of adoption, and length of time in the permanent home were not strongly correlated with total language test scores.  The low-scoring children appeared to have more difficulty with grammatical skills than with vocabulary skills, and on the whole articulation (speech sound production) skills were a strength.  Additional analyses are currently underway, and will be reported here when available.

 

Presentations/publications resulting from this study: 

Pollock, K.E., Chattaway, K., Fast, S., Reay, M., & Zmijewski, C. (2006).  English speech-language skills in children adopted from Haiti.  Poster to be presented at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Miami, FL, November.

 

To learn more about Dr. Pollock's other research, click here: Child Phonology Laboratory

 

Karen E. Pollock, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Professor and Chair
Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology
University of Alberta
E-mail: karen.pollock@ualberta.ca