Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children With an Immigrant Background

Abreu, Pascale Engel de; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina Leite; Befi-Lopes, Débora Maria

doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2012/12-0079)

Cited by 62 publications

(39 citation statements)

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“…The bilingual children were presumably disadvantaged on the L-S NWRT due to having less language-specific knowledge of Dutch to support memory representations needed to successfully repeat items from the L-S NWRT. This finding is consistent with previous work (Engel de Abreu et al, 2013;Engel de Abreu, 2011;Kohnert et al, 2006) and is also apparent in the scores on the language tests (see Table 2), which are substantially lower for the bilingual TD children than for their monolingual TD peers. Knowledge of Dutch did not appear to be as important for the Q-U NWRT as the two TD groups performed similarly.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language

Boerma

Chiat

Leseman

et al. 2015

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractPurpose This study evaluated a newly developed quasi-universal nonword repetition task (Q-U NWRT) as a diagnostic tool for bilingual children with language impairment (LI) who have Dutch as a second language. The Q-U NWRT was designed to be minimally influenced by knowledge of one specific language, in contrast to a language-specific (L-S) NWRT to which it was compared.Methods 120 monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI participated (30 per group). A mixed-design ANOVA was used to investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on the NWRTs. Receiver Operating Characteristic analyses were conducted to evaluate the instruments' diagnostic value.Results Large negative effects of LI were found on both NWRTs, whereas negative effects of bilingualism only occurred on the L-S NWRT. Both instruments had high clinical accuracy in the monolingual group, but only the Q-U NWRT had high clinical accuracy in the bilingual group.Conclusions This study indicates that the Q-U NWRT is a promising diagnostic tool to help identify LI in bilingual children learning Dutch as a second language. The instrument was clinically accurate in both a monolingual and bilingual group of children and seems better able to disentangle language impairment from language disadvantage than more languagespecific measures.3

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language

Boerma

Chiat

Leseman

et al. 2015

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…There is consistent evidence in the literature pointing to the existence of a correlation between lower socioeconomic status and linguistic deficits 16,24,25. Considering that the groups in our study had the same socioeconomic status, the results suggested the possibility that the association between the low socioeconomic status, chronic liver disease and the continuous use of immunosuppressive drugs contributed to low performance on the language tests.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Language assessment of children with severe liver disease in a public service in Brazil

de-Paula¹,

Porta²,

Tannuri³

et al. 2017

Clinics

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OBJECTIVE:The aim of this research was to compare language development (expressive and receptive skills) in children awaiting liver transplantation with that of children who have already undergone the surgical procedure.METHODS:An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted with 76 children divided into groups, as follows: 31 children who were candidates for liver transplantation (Group 1; G1), 45 children who had already undergone liver transplantation (Group 2; G2), and a control group (CG) of 60 healthy, normally developing children. Health status information was gathered, and the Test of Early Language Development (TELD)-3 was used to assess language skills. Family household monthly income data were also gathered using a specific questionnaire.RESULTS:G1 had poorer language performance compared with G2 and the CG. G2 had lower language performance when compared with the CG. However, when considering the TELD-3 standard scores, G2 had scores within normal limits. The regression analysis indicated age as a risk factor for language deficits in Group 1 and family income as a risk factor for language deficits in G2.CONCLUSIONS:The results suggested that children with chronic liver disease have delays in language development. Transplanted children have linguistic performance within normal limits, but their scores tended to be lower than the CG.

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“…In two independent studies, typically developing language‐minority children obtained first and second language scores more than 2 SD (standard deviations) below performance of monolingual speakers (Engel de Abreu et al . , ). It has been suggested that these results could be due to children from socioeconomically disadvantaged language‐minority groups experiencing a subtractive form of bilingualism if their first language is not valued outside of the home (Lambert et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Specific language impairment in language‐minority children from low‐income families

Abreu

Cruz-Santos

Puglisi

2014

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background: Recent evidence suggests that specific language impairment (SLI) might be secondary to general cognitive processing limitations in the domain of executive functioning. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on monolingual children with SLI and offers little evidence-based guidance on executive functioning in bilingual children with SLI. Studying bilinguals with SLI is important, especially in the light of increasing evidence that bilingualism can bring advantages in certain domains of executive functioning. Aims: To determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and, if so, which specific executive processes are affected. Methods & Procedures:This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups were analysed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; and (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression. Outcomes & Results:The bilingual SLI group performed equally well compared with their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory, but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals. Conclusions & Implications:This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals.

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Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children With an Immigrant Background

Abstract: The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.

Cited by 62 publications

References 63 publications

A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language

A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language

Language assessment of children with severe liver disease in a public service in Brazil

Specific language impairment in language‐minority children from low‐income families

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