scholarly journals Revisiting the Influences of Bilingualism and Developmental Language Disorder on Children's Nonverbal Processing Speed

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Kerry Danahy Ebert
Keyword(s):  
Processing Speed ◽  
Visual Detection ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Cognitive Effects ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
English Only ◽  
Hyperactivity Disorder

Purpose This study examined the influences of bilingualism and developmental language disorder (DLD) on nonverbal processing speed. DLD is associated with slower processing speed, but the extent to which slowing extends to bilingual populations is not established. The possible presence of bilingual cognitive effects could also lead to faster processing speed among bilingual children. Method Participants included 108 children of ages 6–8 years, including 56 Spanish–English bilinguals (29 with DLD and 27 with typical development) and 52 English-only monolinguals (25 with DLD and 27 with typical development). Language testing (in both languages for bilingual children) was combined with parent and school report to classify children as having DLD or typical language development. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were excluded from the sample. Reaction time from a choice visual detection task was used to index nonverbal processing speed. Results Children with DLD demonstrated slower processing speed than their typically developing peers, whereas bilingual children demonstrated faster processing speed than monolinguals. The effects of DLD and bilingualism did not interact. Conclusions This study replicates prior findings of slowed processing speed among children with DLD in both monolingual and bilingual children. Evidence of faster processing speed among bilingual children contributes to the complex literature surrounding the circumstances of bilingual cognitive effects. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.15138747

Exploring the Use of Parent and Teacher Questionnaires to Screen for Language Disorders in Bilingual Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 027112142094230
Author(s):  
Amy S. Pratt ◽  
Ashley M. Adams ◽  
Elizabeth D. Peña ◽  
Lisa M. Bedore
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Language Knowledge ◽  
Teacher Reports ◽  
Report Measure

We explore the classification accuracy of a parent and teacher report measure, the Inventory to Assess Language Knowledge (ITALK), to screen for developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children. Participants included 120 Spanish English bilingual children with typical development (TD) and 19 bilingual children with DLD, ranging in age from 5 to 8 years old. Parents’ and teachers’ reports correlated moderately with each other and significantly predicted children’s performance on language-specific measures of morphosyntax and semantics. Results yielded sensitivity of .90 and specificity of .63 when using a composite of parent and teacher reports in Spanish and English. Examination of structure loadings in follow-up analyses by grade showed that teachers’ report of English and parents’ report of Spanish were the strongest predictors of impairment in kindergarten. In second grade, the strongest predictors were parent and teacher reports in English. Implications for referral and identification are discussed.

Compensation to Altered Auditory Feedback in Children With Developmental Language Disorder and Typical Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Caitlin Coughler ◽  
Emily Michaela Hamel ◽  
Janis Oram Cardy ◽  
Lisa M. D. Archibald ◽  
David W. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Feedback ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Shift Condition ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
Processing Component ◽  
Speech Motor

Purpose Developmental language disorder (DLD), an unexplained problem using and understanding spoken language, has been hypothesized to have an underlying auditory processing component. Auditory feedback plays a key role in speech motor control. The current study examined whether auditory feedback is used to regulate speech production in a similar way by children with DLD and their typically developing (TD) peers. Method Participants aged 6–11 years completed tasks measuring hearing, language, first formant (F1) discrimination thresholds, partial vowel space, and responses to altered auditory feedback with F1 perturbation. Results Children with DLD tended to compensate more than TD children for the positive F1 manipulation and compensated less than TD children in the negative shift condition. Conclusion Our findings suggest that children with DLD make atypical use of auditory feedback.

scholarly journals “Did I Say Cherry ?” Error Patterns on a Blocked Cyclic Naming Task for Bilingual Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1148-1164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie McMillen ◽  
Zenzi M. Griffin ◽  
Elizabeth D. Peña ◽  
Lisa M. Bedore ◽  
Gary M. Oppenheim
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Semantic Networks ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Error Type ◽  
Error Patterns ◽  
Language Exposure

Purpose Using a blocked cyclic picture-naming task, we compared accuracy and error patterns across languages for Spanish–English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Method Pictured stimuli were manipulated for semantic similarity across two (Same and Mixed) category contexts. Children's productions were scored off-line for accuracy, error frequency, and error type. Results Typically developing children were more accurate and produced fewer errors than their peers with DLD; however, this was moderated by task language and semantic context. Children were generally more accurate when naming pictures in English compared to Spanish and in the Mixed-category context compared to the Same-category context. Analyses of error types further showed that children with less English language exposure specifically produced more nonresponses in English than in Spanish. Children with DLD produced more of each error type than their typically developing peers, particularly in Spanish. Conclusions Regardless of language ability, bilingual children demonstrated greater difficulty with lexical retrieval for pictured items in the semantically related context than in the unrelated context. However, bilingual children with DLD produced more errors of all types than is typical for children developing more than one language. Their greater error rates are not secondary to limited second language exposure but instead reflect deficits inherent to the nature of language impairment. Results from this study are discussed using a framework of semantic constraint, where we propose that because bilingual children with DLD have impoverished semantic networks, and this knowledge insufficiently constrains activation for lexical selection, thereby increasing error production.

scholarly journals Capacity of the CCC-2 to Discriminate ASD from Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Children ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 640
Author(s):  
Alba de la Torre Carril ◽  
Montserrat Durán-Bouza ◽  
Miguel Pérez-Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Neurodevelopmental Disorders ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Hyperactivity Disorder ◽  
Structural Disorders

The Children’s Communication Checklist (CCC-2) has demonstrated its usefulness as an instrument to assess discrepancies between the use of structural dimensions of language and the pragmatic and sociointeractive uses of language. The aims of the present paper are: (1) to test the capacity of the Galician adaptation of the CCC-2 to discriminate the linguistic profiles of children with different disorders and (2) to test whether the capacity of the CCC-2 to discriminate the linguistic abilities of children with different disorders is the same at different ages: earlier development and later development. The sample is of 117 children previously diagnosed with different disorders: autism spectrum disorder (ASD), developmental language disorder (DLD), attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Down syndrome children (DS) and typically developing children (TD). The children were divided into two different age groups: from 4 to 6 and from 7 to 16 years of age. The results indicate that the Galician CCC-2 (1) accurately identified children with and without communicative impairments, (2) distinguished between profiles with a predominance of pragmatic (ASD and ADHD) and structural disorders (DS and DLD) and (3) distinguished between different profiles of pragmatic impairment. The CCC-2 equally identified these profiles at both earlier and later ages. The Galician CCC-2 seems to be a useful instrument for differentiating among different clinical groups and for assessing pragmatic disorders from an early age, which can be valuable for planning early intervention.

Bilingualism and Processing Speed in Typically Developing Children and Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 1479-1493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji Sook Park ◽  
Carol A. Miller ◽  
Teenu Sanjeevan ◽  
Janet G. van Hell ◽  
Daniel J. Weiss ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Processing Speed ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Language Abilities ◽  
Language Measures

Purpose The aim of the current study was to investigate whether dual language experience modulates processing speed in typically developing (TD) children and in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). We also examined whether processing speed predicted vocabulary and sentence-level abilities in receptive and expressive modalities. Method We examined processing speed in monolingual and bilingual school-age children (ages 8–12 years) with and without DLD. TD children (35 monolinguals, 24 bilinguals) and children with DLD (17 monolinguals, 10 bilinguals) completed a visual choice reaction time task. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Expressive Vocabulary Test were used as language measures. Results The children with DLD exhibited slower response times relative to TD children. Response time was not modified by bilingual experience, neither in children with typical development nor children with DLD. Also, we found that faster processing speed was related to higher language abilities, but this relationship was not significant when socioeconomic status was controlled for. The magnitude of the association did not differ between the monolingual and bilingual groups across the language measures. Conclusions Slower processing speed is related to lower language abilities in children. Processing speed is minimally influenced by dual language experience, at least within this age range. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12210311

Syntactic complexity and verbal working memory in bilingual children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Racha Zebib ◽  
Laurice Tuller ◽  
Cornelia Hamann ◽  
Lina Abed Ibrahim ◽  
Philippe Prévost
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Core Ability ◽  
Language Measures

Sentence repetition (SR) tasks have been shown to be excellent indicators of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). However, there is still no consensus about which core ability they measure: language vs. Verbal Short-Term Memory (VSTM) and Verbal Working Memory (WM). Moreover, very few studies have investigated whether variables predicting SR performance differ in children with DLD compared to typically developing (TD) children, especially concerning bilingual children. This article reports on an SR study of 76 5- to 8-year-old bilingual children with ( n = 23) and without ( n = 53) DLD. The Bi-DLD group displayed significantly lower scores than the Bi-TD group on SR and on VSTM and WM measures. Regression analyses showed that SR was mainly linked to WM in the Bi-DLD group, but not in the TD group, where SR was mainly linked to (independent) language measures. This suggests that children with DLD, who have deficient linguistic knowledge, may rely more on their general processing ability (i.e. WM) in contrast to Bi-TD children, whose language skills are normal, and thus can be solicited for SR. Moreover, individual results suggested that performance on SR does not depend on minimal VSTM or WM spans.

Is There a Cognate Effect in Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Bita Payesteh ◽  
Giang T. Pham
Keyword(s):  
Performance Test ◽  
English Proficiency ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Vocabulary Development ◽  
Difficulty Level ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Test Items

Purpose: Cognates, words in two languages that share form and meaning, can be used to support vocabulary development in bilingual children. Typically developing bilinguals have shown better performance on cognates versus noncognates. Of key interest is whether bilinguals with developmental language disorder (DLD) also show a cognate effect and, if so, which factors are related to their cognate performance. Method: Thirty-five Spanish–English bilingual children (5–11 years old) with DLD completed the Expressive and Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Tests, third edition, in English (EOW, ROW) to measure cognate performance. Test items were divided by difficulty level (easy, medium, and hard) and classified as cognates or noncognates using the Cross-Linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology. Results: On average, children showed clear and robust cognate effects on EOW across difficulty levels with medium-to-large effect sizes. Results on the ROW showed minimal effects that varied by difficulty. Individually, 80% of participants (28 of 35) demonstrated a cognate effect in EOW, whereas only 31% (11 of 35) showed an effect in ROW. A cognate effect in ROW was positively correlated with age and English proficiency, whereas no factors correlated with the EOW cognate effect. Conclusions: Bilingual children with DLD show higher performance on cognates than noncognates, at least in expressive vocabulary. Participants who did show a receptive cognate effect tended to be older and have higher English proficiency. Further investigation is needed to identify factors underlying cognate performance in order to tailor intervention strategies that promote bilingual vocabulary development.

Nonword Repetition Skills in Gulf Arabic–Speaking Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (11) ◽  
pp. 3700-3713
Author(s):  
Saleh Shaalan
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Gulf Arabic ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Phonological Complexity

Purpose This study examined the performance of Gulf Arabic–speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) on a Gulf Arabic nonword repetition (GA-NWR) test and compared it to their age- and language-matched groups. We also investigated the role of syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity in light of NWR theories. Method A new GA-NWR test was conducted with three groups of Gulf Arabic–speaking children: school-age children with DLD, language-matched controls (LCs), and age-matched controls (ACs). The test consisted of two- and three-syllable words that either had no clusters, medial clusters, final clusters, or medial + final clusters. Results The GA-NWR distinguished between the performance of children with DLD and the LC and AC groups. Results showed significant syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity effects. Differences between the DLD and typically developing groups were seen in two- and three-syllable nonwords; however, when compared on nonwords with no clusters, children with DLD were not significantly different from the LC group. Conclusions The GA-NWR test differentiated between children with DLD and their ACs and LCs. Findings, therefore, support its clinical utility in this variety of Arabic. Results showed that phonological processing factors, such as phonological complexity, may have stronger effects when compared to syllable length effects. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12996812

Do Children With Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Have Difficulties With Interference Control, Visuospatial Working Memory, and Selective Attention? Developmental Patterns and the Role of Severity and Persistence of DLD

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (9) ◽  
pp. 3036-3050
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Tessel Boerma
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Visuospatial Working Memory ◽  
Interference Control ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
The Impact

Purpose Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have weaknesses in executive functioning (EF), specifically in tasks testing interference control and working memory. It is unknown how EF develops in children with DLD, if EF abilities are related to DLD severity and persistence, and if EF weaknesses expand to selective attention. This study aimed to address these gaps. Method Data from 78 children with DLD and 39 typically developing (TD) children were collected at three times with 1-year intervals. At Time 1, the children were 5 or 6 years old. Flanker, Dot Matrix, and Sky Search tasks tested interference control, visuospatial working memory, and selective attention, respectively. DLD severity was based on children's language ability. DLD persistence was based on stability of the DLD diagnosis. Results Performance on all tasks improved in both groups. TD children outperformed children with DLD on interference control. No differences were found for visuospatial working memory and selective attention. An interference control gap between the DLD and TD groups emerged between Time 1 and Time 2. Severity and persistence of DLD were related to interference control and working memory; the impact on working memory was stronger. Selective attention was unrelated to DLD severity and persistence. Conclusions Age and DLD severity and persistence determine whether or not children with DLD show EF weaknesses. Interference control is most clearly impaired in children with DLD who are 6 years and older. Visuospatial working memory is impaired in children with severe and persistent DLD. Selective attention is spared.

Sentence Repetition: A Clinical Marker for Developmental Language Disorder in Danish

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4450-4463
Author(s):  
Rikke Vang Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Likelihood Ratios ◽  
Clinical Marker ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Good Identification ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Purpose The aim of the study was to explore the potential of performance on a Danish sentence repetition (SR) task—including specific morphological and syntactic properties—to identify difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) relative to typically developing (TD) children. Furthermore, the potential of the task as a clinical marker for Danish DLD was explored. Method SR performance of children with DLD aged 5;10–14;1 (years;months; n = 27) and TD children aged 5;3–13;4 ( n = 87) was investigated. Results Compared to TD same-age peers, children with DLD were less likely to repeat the sentences accurately but more likely to make ungrammatical errors with respect to verb inflection and use of determiners and personal pronouns. Younger children with DLD also produced more word order errors that their TD peers. Furthermore, older children with DLD performed less accurately than younger TD peers, indicating that the SR task taps into morphosyntactic areas of particular difficulty for Danish children with DLD. The classification accuracy associated with SR performance showed high levels of sensitivity and specificity (> 90%) and likelihood ratios indicating good identification potential for clinical and future research purposes. Conclusion SR performance has a strong potential for identifying children with DLD, also in Danish, and with a carefully designed SR task, performance has potential for revealing morphosyntactic difficulties. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10314437

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