Race,social class,and response bias effects in grammatical processing

Black English and Standard English grammatical sentences were presented to 122 Black and White second graders in a modified cloze task. Both race and social class differences were sampled from within a single primary school, and both Black and White experimenters were utilized. No effects due to social class were found. Black subjects did better on Black English sentences than White subjects and showed fewer errors in the direction of Standard English syntax. An analysis of hit rates and false alarm rates suggested that Black subjects were more likely to emit Black English responses than White subjects but that both groups possessed equivalent sensitivity to grammatical differences. The results are not consistent with a deficit account of Black subjects' performance or with an explanation based on different dialect systems. Rather, it appears that Black and White children may differ only in their willingness to utilize specific response systems and may possess equal comprehension abilities in both dialect systems.This research was supported in part by funds made available to Bowling Green State University by NSF Institutional Grant No. GU-3619. Some of the findings were reported at the 83rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, 1975.