Assessment of second language proficiency in bilingual children with specific language impairment: a clinical perspective.
Bilingualism widens the language gap only when SLI is already present; it does not harm kids with ASD.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared Dutch language skills in four groups of young children. All kids were 5-8 years old.
One group spoke Dutch as a second language and had specific language impairment. The other groups were monolingual SLI, bilingual typical, and monolingual typical.
What they found
Bilingual kids with SLI scored lowest on nearly every Dutch test. Their word knowledge and grammar took the biggest hit.
Monolingual SLI children did better than bilingual SLI peers, even though both groups shared the same core impairment.
How this fits with other research
Griffith et al. (2012) and Cappadocia et al. (2012) looked at bilingual preschoolers with autism, not SLI. Those studies found no vocabulary gap between bilingual and monolingual children with ASD.
The results seem opposite, but the key is diagnosis. ASD plus bilingualism does not slow language growth. SLI plus bilingualism adds extra load.
Mas et al. (2019) later showed bilingual school-age kids with ASD keeping pace on receptive vocabulary. The gap only appears when the primary diagnosis is language impairment, not autism.
Why it matters
When you assess a bilingual child, check the primary diagnosis. If it is SLI, plan for extra Dutch vocabulary and grammar support. Do not assume two languages cause the delay; the SLI does. Still, give families clear, practical ways to boost the school language without dropping home language.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The goal of this study was to examine to what extent the conditions of restricted input of L2 and SLI have an additive impact on language acquisition. Therefore, the Dutch language achievement of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old bilingual children with SLI was compared with that of typically developing monolingual Dutch children, typically developing bilingual children, and monolingual Dutch children with SLI. Assuming that speaking a language in varying environments involves distinct subskills that can be acquired in differential patterns, the achievement of phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic and textual abilities were assessed separately. For each of these abilities, it was determined to what extent the conditions of restricted input (first vs. second language) and language deficit (typically developing vs. SLI) cause stagnation or a delay in language acquisition. Bilingual children with SLI perform at a lower level than the other groups in almost all aspects of achievement in Dutch. For language tasks related to the mental lexicon and grammar, an additional disadvantage was evidenced as a result of the combination of learning Dutch as second language and having SLI.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.03.010