Three Treatments for Bilingual Children With Primary Language Impairment: Examining Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Domain Effects

Abstract

Purpose This study examines the absolute and relative effects of three different treatment programs for school-aged bilingual children with primary or specific language impairment (PLI). It serves to expand the evidence base on which service providers can base treatment decisions. It also explores hypothesized relations between languages and cognition in bilinguals with PLI. Method Fifty-nine school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI were assigned to receive nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, bilingual (Spanish-English), or deferred treatment. Participants in each of the three active treatments received treatment administered by nationally certified speech-language pathologists. Pre- and post-treatment assessments measured change in nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, and Spanish skills, and analyses examined change within and across both treatment groups and skill domains. Results All active treatment groups made significant pre- to post-treatment improvement on multiple outcome measures. There were fewer significant changes in Spanish than in English across groups. Between group comparisons indicate that the active treatment groups generally outperformed the deferred treatment control, reaching statistical significance for two tasks. Conclusions Results provide insight into cross-language transfer in bilingual children and advance understanding of the general PLI profile with respect to relationships between basic cognitive processing and higher level language skills.

Synthesizing Information From Language Samples and Standardized Tests in School-Age Bilingual Assessment

“…The children were recruited through a metropolitan public school district in the upper Midwestern United States to participate in a treatment study (Ebert, Kohnert, Pham, Rentmeester Disher, & Payesteh, 2014). Recruitment followed district procedures; all children who met study criteria were identified by the central district administrative office, and children attending schools that were able to host the treatment study were invited to participate.…”

Monolingual or Bilingual Intervention for Primary Language Impairment? A Randomized Control Trial

“…However, beyond theoretical support for bilingual intervention, little published evidence has been available on language intervention for bilingual children. Ebert, Kohnert, Pham, Disher, and Payesteh (2014) conducted a study of school-age children in which they compared a treatment focusing on nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English-only language treatment, and a bilingual language treatment focusing primarily on Spanish and secondarily on English. The conclusion of this review of studies focusing mainly on preschool-age children was that no study suggested that monolingual treatment was superior to bilingual treatment, whereas some studies suggested that bilingual intervention was superior to a monolingual intervention in that (a) it promoted gains in both languages (Tsybina & Eriks-Brophy, 2010) and/or (b) the second language (L2) learning was more efficient when the home language (L1) was included in therapy (Perozzi & Sanchez, 1992; Elin Thordardottir, Weismer, & Smith, 1997).…”

Does Efficacy Equal Lasting Impact? A Study of Intervention Short Term Gains, Impact on Diagnostic Status, and Association with Background Variables

“…On the other hand, NWR does not rely on meaning in the same way, but can be aided by knowledge of word structure and phonotactics in the language of the nonwords [33]. Whether NWR performance is enhanced by intervention targeting language is an interesting question as certain therapies have attempted to improve language by attempting to enhance relevant memory skills [32]. The results of this study showed significant improvement in sentence imitation but not NWR.…”

“…This treatment method was not selected for investigation because it is believed to be ideal; in particular, a serious limitation of the approach for bilingual children is that only their second language is targeted. A number of studies have indicated that in order to advance vocabulary and basic grammatical skills in both languages, both languages must be targeted in the intervention [6, 10, 31, 32]. However, these same studies have also shown that advances in the second language do result when that language alone is targeted.…”