Emergent Bilinguals: Child Language Proficiency and Language of Treatment

Summary

Of the 12 million children in the USA growing up bilingual, about 1 million experience Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a disorder in language learning and use. Currently there is no guidance for speech language pathologists (SLPs) as to the language of intervention for emergent Spanish-English bilingual children with DLD. This project will examine the relationship between language proficiency and the language of intervention, considering monolingual intervention (Spanish or English) and interleaved Spanish-English intervention with the goal of improving language outcomes and thereby strengthening long-term academic achievement

Detailed Description

More than 8.5 million children in the USA speak Spanish at home (U.S. Census Table S1601, 2020) with about a half million experiencing Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a disorder in language learning and use not attributed to limited language exposure, autism, intellectual disability, etc. (Norbury et al., 2016). Bilingual children with DLD experience language-learning difficulties in both languages, including documented difficulty with complex syntax (Gutiérrez-Clellen, 1998; Jasso et al., under review). While it is self-evident that a monolingual child should be treated in their first language, currently there is no guidance for speech-language pathologists as to the language of intervention for bilingual children (Kohnert, et al., 2005). This is exacerbated by the fact that DLD varies in severity and bilingualism exists across a continuum, ranging from nearly monolingual in either language A or B to balanced bilingualism with good fluency in both languages. Furthermore, children who enter school with only limited proficiency in the majority language (e.g., English) rapidly become more proficient. This continuum is exemplified in our data. Recast therapy, an evidence-based intervention for grammatical difficulties (Cleave et al., 2015), is thought to work via mechanisms similar to priming (Leonard, 2011). Critically, cross-linguistic priming in bilingual children depends on proficiency (Vasilyeva et al., 2010) suggesting a need to align recast therapy with the child's proficiency profile (Gutiérrez-Clellen et al., 2012).

Eligibility Criteria

Interventions