Semantic Convergence in Spanish–English Bilingual Children With Primary Language Impairment

Abstract

Purpose To examine the degree of convergence in word association responses produced by bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) in relation to bilingual age peers. Method Thirty-seven Spanish–English bilingual children with PLI, 37 typically developing (TD) controls, and a normative sample of 112 children produced associations to 24 English and Spanish words. The 5 most frequent responses for each stimulus were identified for the normative sample; then the frequency of occurrence of these frequent normative responses was tabulated and compared between the PLI and TD groups. Results Children with PLI generated fewer frequent normative responses than their TD peers. Spearman rank correlations revealed that the rank frequency of responses in the normative group was significantly correlated with that of the TD and PLI groups; however, in English, the correlation was stronger for the TD cohort. Cross-language associations were also revealed in the generation of frequent norming responses. Conclusions Semantic convergence is determined by multiple factors. Reduced production of frequent normative responses and weakened correlation with group association behavior in English suggest that children with PLI were delayed in converging on a central core of semantic knowledge that is characteristic of bilingual children with typical language skills.

Core vocabulary in the narratives of bilingual children with and without language impairment

“…This is significant because although the differences ranged from 2 to 7 words depending on grade and language, these 30 words represented those that accounted for 75% of the words children used in their narratives. The difference between children with and without PLI noted in core vocabulary use is consistent with the results reported by Sheng et al (2013) for semantic convergence of word association responses and by Ubels (2012) in Spanish–English bilingual children. The present result, however, contradicts the findings reported by Robillard et al (2014) as they did not observe significant differences between TD and PLI groups of bilingual children core words used by each group of children.…”

“…Bilingual children with PLI may also have lexical-semantic deficits affecting the acquisition and use of vocabulary (Peña, Iglesias, & Lidz, 2001; Sheng, Peña, Bedore, & Fiestas, 2012; Windsor, Kohnert, Lobitz, & Pham, 2010). They have limited vocabulary and difficulties retrieving previously acquired words in both structured and spontaneous tasks (Kohnert & Kan, 2007; Restrepo & Kruth, 2000; Sheng, Bedore, Peña, & Taliancich-Klinger, 2013). They are also likely to have word-learning deficits and require more frequent and focussed exposures compared to TD peers to acquire new vocabulary (Peña et al, 2001).…”

Assessment of language impairment in bilingual children using semantic tasks: two languages classify better than one

“…Bilingual children with LI, like their monolingual peers, demonstrate low performance on the repeated associations task relative to their peers matched on age of first experience and amount of use of each language indicated reduced depth of semantic knowledge (Sheng et al . , ). Given the extent of lexical–semantic difficulties, we focus on the utility of a semantic measure (rather than single‐word vocabulary) for diagnostic decision‐making.…”

Conceptual Scoring of Lexical Organization in Bilingual Children With Language Impairment

“…A large number of studies on BLI have focused on grammar (Paradis, 2010; Verhoeven, Steenge, & van Balkom, 2011), but recently studies of lexical abilities in BLI children have been published (Ebert, Pham, & Kohnert, 2014; Sheng, Bedore, Peña, & Taliancich-Klinger, 2013; Sheng et al, 2012). In the studies by Sheng et al (2012) and Sheng et al (2013), BLI children showed less developed lexical organization skills in both their languages compared with bilingual children with typical development. They also displayed poor semantic convergence in comparison with bilingual peers with typical development, that is, the BLI children produced fewer associations that were frequent in the normative sample.…”