Bilingual children with PLI demonstrate a less productive core vocabulary use compared to their TD peers in both their languages illustrating the nature of their grammatical and lexical-semantic deficits.
Aims and objectives: We compare the performance of 600 bilingual children with and without language impairment relative to their level of current English input and output (EIO). Children were tested in both Spanish and English on measures of morphosyntax and semantics. Our aim was to examine whether children’s language performance was differentially affected by the level of EIO and/or language ability. Methodology: Participants were drawn from three different studies of bilingual language impairment where children between the ages of 5 and 10 years were tested using a standardized test of morphosyntax and semantics in both languages. Standard scores were compared for each language in each domain. Data and analysis: Multivariate regression was used to compare main effects of ability (children with typical language development versus children with language impairment) and interactions with EIO. This analysis was followed by a comparison of EIO across the four language measures. Findings/conclusions: There were main effects of language impairment status and EIO. There were ability differences in slope for two measures (English semantics and Spanish morphosyntax), where children with language impairment had a flatter slope as related to EIO compared to children with typical development. For Spanish semantics and English morphosyntax, slopes relative to EIO were similar, although children with language impairment scored lower than those with typical development. Originality: We observed how children with and without language impairment performed on semantics and morphosyntax tasks relative to their EIO. Implications: The similar slopes across language measures of children with and without language impairment suggest that there is no disadvantage to divided input by ability. Where there were differences by ability, children with language impairment showed a flatter slope relative to their typically developing peers, suggesting that bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) may be somewhat advantaged relative to more monolingual children with PLI.
Purpose
The study examines the extent of convergence of semantic category members in Spanish–English bilingual children with reference to adults using a semantic fluency task.
Method
Thirty-seven children with developmental language disorder (DLD), matched pairwise with 37 typically developing (TD) children in the age range of 7;0–9;11 (years;months), produced items in 7 semantic categories (3 taxonomic and 4 slot-filler) in both Spanish and English. The 10 most frequently produced items for each category by 20 Spanish–English bilingual adults were identified as the most prototypical responses. The top 10 items generated by TD children and children with DLD, in their order of production, were analyzed for the amount of convergence with adults' responses.
Results
The top 5 items produced by children with DLD showed similar convergence scores as those produced by their TD peers. However, their responses in the 6th to 10th positions showed lower convergence scores than their TD peers. Children's convergence scores were higher for the slot-filler condition compared to taxonomic in both English and Spanish. The convergence scores also significantly differed across the semantic categories.
Conclusion
The children with DLD show greater convergence on the typical items generated earlier in their word lists than the items generated later. This pattern of convergence and divergence highlights their strengths and weaknesses in the representation of lexical–semantic knowledge for typical versus less typical items.
Supplemental Material
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8323613
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.