Monolingual and Bilingual Children with DLD | ||||||
Study | | | | | | |
Objective | To distinguish children with typical language development (TLD) from those with SLI | To 1) identify the narrative components that differentiate TD and DLD groups 2) determine the role of age and input factors in predicting L2 narrative abilities in each group | To compare narrative abilities in children with specific language impairment (SLI) who are monolingual and those who are dual language learners | To identify potential clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI)in bilingual children with SLI | To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between preschoolers with and without SLI who are either monolingual or bilingual at two time points | To examine the linguistic expression of causal relations between the motion events within the main episode in a picture-based narrative |
Nationality | English-Hebrew bilingual | 24 English L2 learners with DLD and 63 English L2 learners with TD from diverse L1 backgrounds (such as Assyrian, Mandarin, Somali, Pashto, Spanish and Arabic) | 26 children with SLI, 14 monolingual English speakers and 12 dual language learners | Greek monolinguals and Bilinguals | English monolinguals and bilinguals | 45 Hebrew monolinguals (19 with Developmental Language Disorder [DLD]), 57 English-Hebrew bilinguals (20 with DLD) and 48 Russian-Hebrew bilinguals (21 with DLD) |
Sample | Two groups (TLD = 19, SLI = 12) | 24 English L2 with DLD and 63 English L2 learners with TD from diverse L1 backgrounds | 26 children with SLI, 14 monolingual English speakers and 12 dual language learners. The dual language learners were English dominant and spoke a variety of other languages in the home | Twenty-one Greek-speaking monolingual and 15 bilingual children with SLI along with monolingual (N = 21) and bilingual (N = 15) age-matched children with typical development | 20 participants with SLI included 10 monolingual speakers of English (four boys and six girls) and 10 bilingual children (six boys and four girls) | One hundred and fifty children |
Pre-School children | Yes, aged 64 - 78 months | mean = 5.8 | Mean (SD) 3.5 |
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| 5 - 7 years |
School-aged children |
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| mean age = 9.0 | mean ages = 52 and 58 months at Times 1 and 2, respectively | 5 - 7 years |
Methodology/ instruments | Retelling of stories accompanied by six pictures matched across content (Baby Birds/Baby Goats) and to the extent possible across languages (first language/ second language) for macrostructure, microstructure and MSTs | story generation task and a parent questionnaire | The two SLI groups were compared using standardized tests and measures from two narrative samples | Greek version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. | The performance on measures of narrative macrostructure (narrative information) and microstructure (sentence length, number of different words, verb accuracy, first mentions) in monolingual and bilingual children with and without SLI. | Narration of a story, based on a series of pictures. Production of coherent narratives so as to assemble narrative events into a causally related, goal-oriented episode, basically composed of a goal, an attempt to reach the goal and a final outcome |