Semin Speech Lang 2009; 30(4): 219-233
DOI: 10.1055/s-0029-1241721
© Thieme Medical Publishers

Bilingual Children and Communication Disorders: A 30-Year Research Retrospective

Kathryn Kohnert1 , Amelia Medina1
  • 1Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
22 October 2009 (online)

ABSTRACT

We present a review of the empirical literature at the intersection of bilingualism and pediatric communication disorders. A computer search of six electronic databases was done to identify studies published in English since 1950 that directly investigated some aspect of speech, language, or cognitive performance in developing bilinguals and children with communication impairments. The computer search yielded 116 nonduplicated articles, the first published in 1978. An article review by the authors further reduced the number of studies meeting search criteria to 64. A majority of studies focused on primary developmental language impairment (LI) and children learning two languages sequentially. Spanish and English were the most frequent combination of languages for bilingual participants. Collective study findings are presented with respect to trends, clinical implications, and areas for future research.

REFERENCES

  • 1 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association .Evidence-based practice with communication disorders [position statement]. Available at: http://www.asha.org/members/deskrefjournals/deskref/default Accessed January 10, 2009
  • 2 Sackett D, Strauss S, Richardson W, Rosenberg W, Haynes R. Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM. 2nd ed. New York, NY; Churchill Livingstone 2000
  • 3 Robey R, Apel K, Dollaghan C et al.. Report on the Joint Committee on Evidence-Based Practice. Rockville, MD; ASHA 2004
  • 4 Kohnert K. Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults. San Diego, CA; Plural Publishing 2008
  • 5 Kohnert K. Evidence-based practice and treatment of speech sound disorders in bilingual children.  Am Speech-Lang-Hear Assoc. 2007;  14(2) 17-20
  • 6 U.S. Department of Education . To assure the free appropriate public education of all Americans: Twenty-seventh annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  Available at: http://www.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/osep/2005/index.html Accessed January 5, 2009; 
  • 7 Kelly D J. A clinical synthesis of the “Late Talker” literature: implications for service delivery.  Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 1998;  29 76-84
  • 8 Tomblin J B, Records N L, Buckwalter P, Zhang X, Smith E, O'Brien M. Prevalence of specific language impairment in kindergarten children.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1997;  40 1245-1260
  • 9 Altarac M, Saraho E. Lifetime prevalence of learning disability among US children.  Pediatrics. 2007;  119(Suppl 1) S77-S83
  • 10 Andrews G. The epidemiology of stuttering. In: Curlee RF, Perkins WH Nature and Treatment of Stuttering: New Directions. San Diego, CA; College-Hill Press 1984: 1-12
  • 11 Zebrowski P M. Developmental stuttering.  Pediatr Ann. 2003;  32 453-458
  • 12 Craig A, Hancock K, Tran Y, Craig M, Peters K. Epidemiology of stuttering in the communication across the entire life span.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2002;  45 1097-1105
  • 13 Howell P, Davis S R, Williams R. The effects of bilingualism on stuttering during late childhood.  Arch Dis Child. 2009;  94 42-46
  • 14 Cheuk DKL, Wong V, Leung G M. Multilingual home environment and specific language impairment: a case–control study in Chinese children.  Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2005;  19 303-314
  • 15 U.S. Bureau of the Census .Languages spoken at home. Available at: http://www.census.gov Accessed January 10, 2009
  • 16 Miller N. The bilingual child in the speech therapy clinic.  Br J Disord Commun. 1978;  13 17-30
  • 17 Junker D A, Stockman I J. Expressive vocabulary of German-English bilingual toddlers.  Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2002;  11 381-394
  • 18 Restrepo M A, Silverman S W. Validity of the Spanish Preschool Language Scale-3 for use with bilingual children.  Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2001;  10 382-393
  • 19 Kan P F, Kohnert K. Preschoolers learning Hmong and English: lexical-semantic skills in L1 and L2.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2005;  48 372-378
  • 20 Konefal J A, Fokes J. Voice onset time: the development of Spanish-English distinction in normal and language disordered children.  J Phonetics. 1981;  9 437-444
  • 21 Damico J S, Oller J W, Storey M E. The diagnosis of language disorders in bilingual children: surface-oriented and pragmatic criteria.  J Speech Hear Disord. 1983;  48 385-394
  • 22 Merino B J. Language development in normal and language handicapped Spanish-speaking children.  Hisp J Behav Sci. 1983;  5 379-400
  • 23 Perozzi J A. A pilot study of language facilitation for bilingual, language-handicapped children: theoretical and intervention implications.  J Speech Hear Disord. 1985;  50 403-406
  • 24 Roseberry C, Connell P. The use of an invented language rule in the differentiation of normal and language-impaired Spanish-speaking children.  J Speech Hear Res. 1991;  34 596-603
  • 25 Fletcher P. Lexical verbs and language impairment: a case study.  Clin Linguist Phon. 1992;  6 147-154
  • 26 Perozzi J A, Sanchez M C. The effect of instruction in L1 on receptive acquisition of L2 for bilingual children with language delay.  Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 1992;  23 348-352
  • 27 Schiff-Myers N B, Djukic J, McGovern-Lawler J, Perez D. Assessment considerations in the evaluation of second-language learners: a case study.  Except Child. 1994;  60 237-248
  • 28 Brice A, Montgomery J. Adolescent pragmatic skills: a comparison of Latino students in English as a second language and speech and language programs.  Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 1996;  27 68-81
  • 29 Salameh E, Håkansson G, Nettelbladt U. The acquisition of Swedish as second language in a group of Arabic-speaking pre-school children: word order patterns and phrasal morphology.  Logoped Phoniatr Vocol. 1996;  21 163-170
  • 30 Thordardottir E T, Weismer S E, Smith M E. Vocabulary learning in bilingual and monolingual clinical intervention.  Child Lang Teach Ther. 1997;  13 215-227
  • 31 Restrepo M A. Identifiers of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language impairment.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1998;  41 1398-1411
  • 32 Eng N, O'Connor B. Acquisition of definite article + noun agreement of Spanish-English bilingual children with specific language impairment.  Comm Disord Q. 2000;  21 114-124
  • 33 Fabbro F. Developmental language disorders in bilingual children.  Saggi: Child Develop & Disabil. 2000;  26 49-55
  • 34 Peña E. Measurement of modifiability in children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.  Comm Disord Q. 2000;  21 87-97
  • 35 Restrepo M A, Kruth K. Grammatical characteristics of a Spanish-English bilingual child with specific language impairment.  Com Dis Q. 2000;  21 66-76
  • 36 Håkansson G. Tense morphology and verb-second in Swedish L1 children, L2 children and children SLI.  Biling Lang Cogn. 2001;  4 85-99
  • 37 Restrepo M A, Gutiérrez-Clellen V F. Article use in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment.  J Child Lang. 2001;  28 433-452
  • 38 Jacobson P F, Schwartz R G. Morphology in incipient bilingual Spanish-speaking preschool children with specific language impairment.  Appl Psychol. 2002;  23 23-41
  • 39 Håkansson G, Salameh E, Nettelbladt U. Measuring language development in bilingual children: Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment.  Linguistics. 2003;  41 255-288
  • 40 MacLeod AAN, McCauley R J. The phonological abilities of bilingual children with specific language impairment: a descriptive analysis.  J Speech Lang Pathol Audiol. 2003;  27 29-44
  • 41 Paradis J, Crago M, Genesee F, Rice M. French-English bilingual children with SLI: how do they compare with their monolingual peers?.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003;  46 113-127
  • 42 Salameh E, Nettelbladt U, Norlin K. Assessing phonologies in bilingual Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment.  Child Lang Teach Ther. 2003;  19 338-364
  • 43 Kohnert K, Windsor J. The search for common ground: Part II. Nonlinguistic performance by linguistically diverse learners.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004;  47 891-903
  • 44 Kohnert K, Windsor J, Miller R. Crossing borders: recognition of Spanish words by English-speaking children with and without language impairment.  Appl Psychol. 2004;  25 543-564
  • 45 Ottem E, Jakobsen U. Using the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Ability with bilingual and monolingual language-impaired children.  Scand J Educ Res. 2004;  48 159-167
  • 46 Paradis J. The relevance of specific language impairment in understanding the role of transfer in second language acquisition.  Appl Psychol. 2004;  25 67-82
  • 47 Salameh E, Håkansson G, Nettelbladt U. Developmental perspectives on bilingual Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment: A longitudinal study.  Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2004;  39 65-91
  • 48 Windsor J, Kohnert K. The search for common ground: Part I. Lexical performance by linguistically diverse learners.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004;  47 877-890
  • 49 Danzak R L, Silliman E R. Does my identity speak English? A pragmatic approach to the social world of an English language learner with language impairment.  Semin Speech Lang. 2005;  26 189-200
  • 50 Jacobson P F, Schwartz R G. English past tense use in bilingual children with language impairment.  Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2005;  14 313-323
  • 51 Grüter T. Comprehension and production of French object clitics by child second language learners and children with specific language impairment.  Appl Psychol. 2005;  26 363-391
  • 52 McCabe A, Bliss L S. Narratives from Spanish-speaking children with impaired and typical language development.  Imagin Cogn Personality. 2005;  24 331-346
  • 53 Paradis J, Crago M, Genesee F. Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of specific language impairment: evidence from bilingual children's acquisition of object pronouns.  Lang Acquis. 2005;  13 33-62
  • 54 Gutiérrez-Clellen V F, Restrepo M A, Simon-Cereijido G. Evaluating the discriminant accuracy of a grammatical measure with Spanish-speaking children.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2006;  49 1209-1223
  • 55 Kohnert K, Windsor J, Yim D. Do language-based processing tasks separate children with language impairment from typical bilinguals?.  Learn Disabil Res Pract. 2006;  21 19-29
  • 56 Danahy K, Windsor J, Kohnert K. Counting span and the identification of primary language impairment.  Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2007;  42 349-365
  • 57 Gutiérrez-Clellen V F, Simon-Cereijido G. The discriminant accuracy of a grammatical measure with Latino English-speaking children.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2007;  50 968-981
  • 58 Pihko E, Mickos A, Kujala T et al.. Group intervention changes brain activity in bilingual language-impaired children.  Cereb Cortex. 2007;  17 849-858
  • 59 Simon-Cereijido G, Gutiérrez-Clellen V F. Spontaneous language markers of Spanish language impairment.  Appl Psychol. 2007;  28 317-339
  • 60 Gutiérrez-Clellen V F, Simon-Cereijido G, Wagner C. Bilingual children with language impairment: a comparison with monolinguals and second language learners.  Appl Psychol. 2008;  29 3-19
  • 61 Orgassa A, Weerman F. Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second language acquisition.  Second Lang Res. 2008;  24 333-364
  • 62 Paradis J, Rice M, Crago M, Marquis J. The acquisition of tense in English: distinguishing child second language from first language and specific language impairment.  Appl Psychol. 2008;  29 689-722
  • 63 Sanz-Torrent M, Serrat E, Andreu L, Serra M. Verb morphology in Catalan and Spanish in children with specific language impairment: a developmental study.  Clin Linguist Phon. 2008;  22 459-474
  • 64 Girbau D, Schwartz R G. Phonological working memory in Spanish-English bilingual children with and without specific language impairment.  J Commun Disord. 2008;  41 124-145
  • 65 Windsor J, Kohnert K, Loxtercamp A L, Kan P. Performance on nonlinguistic visual tasks by children with language impairment.  Appl Psychol. 2008;  29 237-268
  • 66 Holm A, Dodd B, Stow C, Pert S. Speech disorders in bilingual children: four case studies.  Osmania Papers in Linguistics. 1995;  22–23 45-64
  • 67 Martin D, Colesby C, Jhamat K K. Phonological awareness in Panjabi/English children with phonological difficulties.  Child Lang Teach Ther. 1997;  13 59-72
  • 68 Dodd B, Holm A, Wei L. Speech disorder in preschool children exposed to Cantonese and English.  Clin Linguist Phon. 1997;  11 229-243
  • 69 Holm A, Ozanne A, Dodd B. Efficacy of intervention for a bilingual child making articulation and phonological errors.  Inter J Bilingual. 1997;  1 55-69
  • 70 Holm A, Dodd B. An intervention case study of a bilingual child with phonological disorder.  Child Lang Teach Ther. 1999;  15 139-158
  • 71 Holm A, Dodd B. Differential diagnosis of phonological disorder in two bilingual children acquiring Italian and English.  Clin Linguist Phon. 1999;  13 113-129
  • 72 Holm A, Dodd B, Stow C, Pert S. Identification and differential diagnosis of phonological disorder in bilingual children.  Lang Test. 1999;  16 271-292
  • 73 Holm A, Dodd B. Comparison of cross-language generalisation following speech therapy.  Folia Phoniatr Logop. 2001;  53 166-172
  • 74 Ingram D. The measurement of whole-word productions.  J Child Lang. 2002;  29 713-733
  • 75 Ray J. Treating phonological disorders in a multilingual child: a case study.  Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2002;  11 305-315
  • 76 Goldstein B, Fabiano L, Iglesias A. Spontaneous and imitated productions in Spanish-speaking children with phonological disorders.  Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2004;  35 5-15
  • 77 Tzivinikou S. Identification and differential diagnosis of developmental speech problems in a bilingual child.  Early Child Dev Care. 2005;  175 165-178
  • 78 Trudeau N, Colozzo P, Sylvestre V, Ska B. Language following functional left hemispherectomy in a bilingual teenager.  Brain Cogn. 2003;  53 384-388
  • 79 Mariën P, Abutalebi J, Engelborghs S, Deyn P P. Pathophysiology of language switching and mixing in an early bilingual child with subcortical aphasia.  Neurocase. 2005;  11 385-398
  • 80 Bird E K, Cleave P, Trudeau N, Thordardottir E, Sutton A, Thorpe A. The language abilities of bilingual children with Down syndrome.  Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2005;  14 187-199
  • 81 Robbins A M, Green J, Waltzman S. Bilingual oral language proficiency in children with cochlear implants.  Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2004;  130 644-647
  • 82 Seung H, Siddiqi S, Elder J H. Intervention outcomes of a bilingual child with autism.  J Med Speech-Lang Pathol. 2006;  14 53-63
  • 83 Jordaan H, Shaw-Ridley G, Serfontein J, Orelowitz K, Monaghan N. Cognitive and linguistic profiles of specific language impairment and semantic-pragmatic disorder in bilinguals.  Folia Phoniatr Logop. 2001;  53 153-165
  • 84 Kohnert K, Windsor J, Ebert K. Primary or “specific” language impairment and children learning a second language.  Brain Lang. 2009;  109 101-111

Kathryn KohnertPh.D. CCC-SLP 

Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, 115 Shelvin Hall

164 Pillsbury Dr., S.E., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Email: kohne005@umn.edu

    >