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

Abstract

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.

Practitioner Review: Multilingualism and neurodevelopmental disorders – an overview of recent research and discussion of clinical implications

“…As may be expected, comparisons between multiSLI and monoTD groups on lexical or general language measures including receptive and expressive vocabulary, general vocabulary, general/composite language scales, and word reading tended to show poorer performance by the multiSLI when compared to monoTD group (Crutchley et al., ; Engel de Abreu et al., ; Thordardottir & Brandeker, ). However, Kapantzoglou, Restrepo, and Thompson () reported that multiSLI children were able to engage in novel word learning/production in a similar way to monoTD peers in a dynamic assessment context.…”

“…Multilingual SLI versus typically developing groups: When compared to multiTD groups, multiSLI groups tend to show worse performance on psycholinguistic tasks thought to underpin language and reading abilities including phonological awareness, memory including phonological memory indexed by nonword repetition and verbal working memory measured via digit recall task, rapid automatic naming, auditory attention and letter identification (Aguilar‐Mediavilla et al., ; Engel de Abreu, Cruz‐Santos, & Puglisi, ; Girbau & Schwartz, ). However, when compared to monoTD groups, multiSLI children showed poorer performance only on a digit recall task (index of verbal working memory; Engel de Abreu et al., ) but not for nonword repetition (index of working memory), sentence repetition, working memory (counting task), visuospatial working memory, interference suppression, selective attention and nonverbal IQ (Crutchley et al., ; Engel de Abreu et al., ; Thordardottir & Brandeker, ).…”

“…Most studies found that multiSLI groups, when compared to monoTD groups, performed worse on measures of linguistic features (Crutchley et al., ; Engel de Abreu et al., ; Spoelman & Bol, ; Verhoeven, Steenge, van Weerdenburg, et al., ; Verhoeven, Steenge, & van Balkom, ). However, findings were mixed when they were compared to multiTD groups, with an equal number of studies reporting poorer performance on measures of linguistic features including use of correct verb forms or endings according to tense and number, and persistence of immature grammatical forms, and number of grammatical errors produced (Blom & Paradis, ; Rothweiler, Chilla, & Babur, ; Sanz‐Torrent, ) and conversely, no differences on these types of measures (Clahsen et al., ; Gutierrez‐Clellen, Simon‐Cereijido, & Erickson Leone, ; Verhoeven, Steenge, van Weerdenburg, et al., ; Verhoeven, Steenge, & van Balkom, ).…”

“…Notes on methodology: The majority of studies reported matching groups on at least CA (apart from Rothweiler et al., ; Salameh et al., ; Sanz‐Torrent, ). Most provided information on how bilingualism was assessed (apart from Aguilar‐Mediavilla et al., ; Engel de Abreu et al., ; Crutchley et al., ; Sanz‐Torrent, ) and defined the type of bilingualism in their sample (apart from Aguilar‐Mediavilla et al., ; Crutchley et al., ; Girbau & Schwartz, ; Sanz‐Torrent, ). Effect sizes for comparisons were reported in most but not all studies and ranged from small to large.…”

English Language Proficiency and Early School Attainment Among Children Learning English as an Additional Language

“…In this study, discrepancies between children with EAL and monolingual peers in social, emotional, and behavioral functioning in reception year and in academic attainment in Year 2 became greater as language proficiency decreased. This may indicate that bilingualism may be a protective factor against some of the difficulties associated with low language proficiency or language impairment (Engel de Abreu et al., ). However, these findings may also reflect the different or multifaceted origins of the language difficulties in these two groups.…”