Verb inflection in monolingual Dutch and sequential bilingual Turkish-Dutch children with and without SLI

Building a unified model of the Optional Infinitive Stage: Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of verb-marking error in typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder

Verb-marking errors are a characteristic feature of the speech of typically-developing (TD) children and are particularly prevalent in the speech of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). However, both the pattern of verb-marking error in TD children and the pattern of verb-marking deficit in DLD vary across languages and interact with the semantic and syntactic properties of the language being learned. In this paper, we review work using a computational model called MOSAIC. We show how this work allows us to understand several features of the cross-linguistic data that are otherwise difficult to explain. We also show how discrepancies between the developmental data and the quantitative predictions generated by MOSAIC can be used to identify weaknesses in our current understanding and lead to further theory development; and how the resulting model (MOSAIC+) helps us understand differences in the cross-linguistic patterning of verb-marking errors in TD children and children with DLD.

Teaching foreign language grammar to primary-school children with developmental language disorder: A classroom-based intervention study

INTRODUCTION

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) start learning foreign languages, usually English as a foreign language (EFL), at an increasingly young age. However, current scholarship lacks crucial insights into how children with DLD respond to language learning in classroom settings and how they can be supported in doing so. The purpose of this early efficacy study is to determine whether a business-as-usual curriculum or a new teaching method tailored to the specific needs of pupils with DLD results in (greater) progress in the foreign language (English) and in the school language (Dutch).

METHOD

The participants were 75 pupils with DLD in the last three years of primary school, learning EFL in special education in the Netherlands. The intervention group (n=41) received 12 lessons following the CodeTaal approach, including metalinguistic instruction of grammar rules, explicit cross-linguistic contrasts and multimodal interaction with the material. The control group (n=34) received their regular English lessons. The study used a pre- to post-test design and compared the performance of the two groups on a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) in English and a narrative task in both English and Dutch.

RESULTS

Only the intervention group significantly improved in their ability to identify ungrammaticalities in English and generalised the learnt rules to new sentences. Although the performance on the GJT predicted accuracy of English narratives, neither group showed a significant decrease of error rates in English. In contrast, the accuracy of Dutch narratives showed improvement, but only in the intervention group. However, the effects were small and there was significant variability in responsiveness to the intervention.

CONCLUSION

We conclude that pupils with DLD are able to make progress in foreign language learning in a classroom setting if provided with adequate support.

The role of age and timing in bilingual assessment: non-word repetition, subject-verb agreement and case marking in L1 and eL2 children with and without SLI

Diagnostics in bilingual children is challenging, due to an overlap of production patterns in typically developing (TD) bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (SLI). To screen bilingual children effectively, the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) tools were developed in an international project. The present study tests three of these tools for their suitability and diagnostic accuracy for early second language learners (eL2) of German, aged six to eight years. The study focuses on the timing in first language (L1) TD acquisition, investigating early and late acquisition phenomena of the morphosyntactic domain (subject-verb agreement [SVA], and case marking), combined with a non-word repetition (NWR) task targeting phonological complexity. The study aims at evaluating these three LITMUS-tools regarding their diagnostic accuracy, compared to a standardised assessment tool (LiSe-DaZ).To this end, forty-two children were tested using the LITMUS-tools, namely, contrastive case marking (CCM), supplemented by an elicitation task for the prepositional case, SVA and NWR. Four groups of children participated: eL2 children with SLI (mean age 7;6, mean age of onset 3;1), eL2 children with TD (mean age 7;10, mean age of onset 2;11), L1 TD children (mean age 7;3) and L1 SLI children (mean age 7;2). Results show NWR and SVA as suitable markers and the LITMUS-tools as suitable screenings. Conversely, CCM does not disentangle SLI from TD in the investigated bilingual population by this age.

Simulating the Acquisition of Verb Inflection in Typically Developing Children and Children With Developmental Language Disorder in English and Spanish

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have significant deficits in language ability that cannot be attributed to neurological damage, hearing impairment, or intellectual disability. The symptoms displayed by children with DLD differ across languages. In English, DLD is often marked by severe difficulties acquiring verb inflection. Such difficulties are less apparent in languages with rich verb morphology like Spanish and Italian. Here we show how these differential profiles can be understood in terms of an interaction between properties of the input language, and the child's ability to learn predictive relations between linguistic elements that are separated within a sentence. We apply a simple associative learning model to sequential English and Spanish stimuli and show how the model's ability to associate cues occurring earlier in time with later outcomes affects the acquisition of verb inflection in English more than in Spanish. We relate this to the high frequency of the English bare form (which acts as a default) and the English process of question formation, which means that (unlike in Spanish) bare forms frequently occur in third-person singular contexts. Finally, we hypothesize that the pro-drop nature of Spanish makes it easier to associate person and number cues with the verb inflection than in English. Since the factors that conspire to make English verb inflection particularly challenging for learners with weak sequential learning abilities are much reduced or absent in Spanish, this provides an explanation for why learning Spanish verb inflection is relatively unaffected in children with DLD.

Focused Stimulation Intervention in 4- and 5-Year-Old Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Exploring Implementation in Clinical Practice

Purpose Applying evidence-based grammar intervention can be challenging for speech and language therapists (SLTs). Language in Interaction Therapy (LIT) is a focused stimulation intervention for children with weak morphosyntactic skills, which was developed to support SLTs in incorporating results from effect studies in daily practice. The aims of this Clinical Focus are (a) to explain the principles and elements of LIT and stimulate use in daily SLT practice and (b) to describe the effects of LIT on morphosyntactic skills of 4- to 5-year-olds in special education, compared to usual care. Method With a description of LIT, we provide guidance to implement evidence-based intervention. Important elements are as follows: proper selection of therapy goals, language facilitating techniques, child-centered and clinician-directed elements, and the use of scripts. Our focus in the description is on the support and practical solutions LIT tries to provide to SLTs. We also explored the implementation of LIT in special education, to improve morphosyntax in 4- and 5-year-old children. We provided SLTs with training and designed protocols for each therapy session. The effects of LIT were measured in a single-case A-B design, repeated in five children with developmental language disorders (ages 4;2-5;7 [years;months]). Conclusion We conclude that implementation of LIT is possible if LIT is enriched with support in goal selection, protocols to guide therapy sessions, and training and coaching. In the single-case study, four children showed more growth in mean length of utterance during and directly following the LIT intervention phase, compared to the baseline phase with usual care, and in two of them, this difference was significant. The grammatical complexity measure "TARSP-P" showed an overall significantly higher score at group level during LIT, but limited effects on an individual level.

Five overarching factors central to grammatical learning and treatment in children with developmental language disorder

BACKGROUND

During grammatical treatment of children with developmental language disorder (DLD), it is natural for therapists to focus on the grammatical details of the target language that give the children special difficulty. However, along with the language-specific features of the target (e.g., for English, add -s to verbs in present tense, third-person singular contexts), there are overarching factors that operate to render the children's learning task more, or less, challenging, depending on the particular target.

AIMS

To identify five such factors that can play a role in the grammatical learning of children with DLD. We use English as our example language and provide supporting evidence from a variety of other languages.

MAIN CONTRIBUTION

We show that the relative degree of English-speaking children's difficulty with particular grammatical details can be affected by the extent to which these details involve: (1) bare stems; (2) opportunities for grammatical case confusion; (3) prosodic challenges; (4) grammatical and lexical aspect; and (5) deviations from canonical word order.

CONCLUSIONS

During treatment, therapists will want to consider not only the English-specific features of grammatical targets but also how these more general factors can be taken into account to increase the children's success.

Referential Cohesion in the Narratives of Bilingual and Monolingual Children With Typically Developing Language and With Specific Language Impairment

Purpose The study explores referential cohesion in the narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical language development (TLD) and with specific language impairment (SLI). Referential cohesion requires integration of multiple discourse factors and is expected to pose a challenge for children with bilingual SLI due to weak proficiency in both languages. Method Narratives were elicited from 45 bilinguals speaking Russian as the home language (L1) and Hebrew as the societal language (L2; 15 with SLI), 20 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals (10 with SLI), and 20 Russian-speaking monolinguals (10 with SLI) using a story retelling procedure. Bilinguals were tested in both languages. Analyses examined the effect of impairment (SLI vs. TLD) in bilinguals and monolinguals. Language effects were examined in cross-language comparisons of bilinguals (L1 vs. L2) and in differences between monolingual groups (Russian vs. Hebrew speakers) for the use of referential expressions. Results Bilingual children with SLI used a higher proportion of pronouns for character introduction and had fewer pronouns, which have been described as "adequate" ( Colozzo & Whitely, 2014 ) than bilingual children with TLD. No language effect emerged for bilinguals, who performed similarly in their L1 and L2, but a significant cross-linguistic difference emerged in the monolingual data: Russian-speaking children mainly used nouns to introduce and maintain characters, whereas Hebrew-speaking children mainly used pronouns for introduction and maintenance of characters. Conclusion The difficulty of children with SLI in creating a referential connection between a pronoun and a noun phrase is discussed in light of the interaction of local and global processes in narratives, which is shown to be weaker in children with SLI.

Language Proficiency and Sustained Attention in Monolingual and Bilingual Children with and without Language Impairment

Background: The language profiles of children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children can show partial, and possibly temporary, overlap. The current study examined the persistence of this overlap over time. Furthermore, we aimed to better understand why the language profiles of these two groups show resemblance, testing the hypothesis that the language difficulties of children with LI reflect a weakened ability to maintain attention to the stream of linguistic information. Consequent incomplete processing of language input may lead to delays that are similar to those originating from reductions in input frequency. Methods: Monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (N = 128), aged 5-8 years old, participated in this study. Dutch receptive vocabulary and grammatical morphology were assessed at three waves. In addition, auditory and visual sustained attention were tested at wave 1. Mediation analyses were performed to examine relationships between LI, sustained attention, and language skills. Results: Children with LI and bilingual children were outperformed by their typically developing (TD) and monolingual peers, respectively, on vocabulary and morphology at all three waves. The vocabulary difference between monolinguals and bilinguals decreased over time. In addition, children with LI had weaker auditory and visual sustained attention skills relative to TD children, while no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals emerged. Auditory sustained attention mediated the effect of LI on vocabulary and morphology in both the monolingual and bilingual groups of children. Visual sustained attention only acted as a mediator in the bilingual group. Conclusion: The findings from the present study indicate that the overlap between the language profiles of children with LI and bilingual children is particularly large for vocabulary in early (pre)school years and reduces over time. Results furthermore suggest that the overlap may be explained by the weakened ability of children with LI to sustain their attention to auditory stimuli, interfering with how well incoming language is processed.

Grammatical Morphology in Monolingual and Bilingual Children With and Without Language Impairment: The Case of Dutch Plurals and Past Participles

PURPOSE

Grammatical morphology is often a locus of difficulty for both children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children. In contrast to previous research that mainly focused on verbal tense and agreement markings, the present study investigated whether plural and past participle formation can disentangle the effects of LI and bilingualism and, in addition, can point to weaknesses of LI that hold across monolingual and bilingual contexts.

METHOD

Monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (n = 33 per group) were tested at 2 waves with a word formation task that elicited Dutch noun plurals and past participles. The quantity and quality of errors as well as children's development over time were examined.

RESULTS

The plural formation task discriminated between monolingual children with and without LI, but a less differentiated picture emerged in the bilingual group. Moreover, plural accuracy showed fully overlapping language profiles of monolinguals with LI and bilinguals without LI, in contrast to accuracy scores on the past participle formation task. Error analyses suggested that frequent omission of participial affixes may be indicative of LI, irrespective of lingual status.

CONCLUSION

The elicited production of past participles may support a reliable diagnosis of LI in monolingual and bilingual learning contexts.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5165689.

Connective processing by bilingual children and monolinguals with specific language impairment: distinct profiles

Production studies show that both Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and bilingual children for whom Russian is a non-dominant language have difficulty distinguishing between the near-synonymous connectives i 'and' and a 'and/but'. I is a preferred connective when reference is maintained, whereas a is normally used for reference shift. We report an eye-tracking experiment comparing connective processing by Russian-speaking monolinguals with typical language development (TLD) with that of Russian-Dutch bilinguals and Russian-speaking monolinguals with SLI (age 5-6). The results demonstrate that the processing profiles of monolinguals with TLD and bilinguals are similar: both groups use connective semantics immediately for predicting further discourse. In contrast, children with SLI do not show sensitivity to these semantic differences. Despite similar production profiles, bilinguals and monolinguals with SLI are clearly different in connective processing. We discuss the implications of these results for the possible causes of the errors in the two populations.

A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language

PURPOSE

This study evaluated a newly developed quasi-universal nonword repetition task (Q-U NWRT) as a diagnostic tool for bilingual children with language impairment (LI) who have Dutch as a 2nd language. The Q-U NWRT was designed to be minimally influenced by knowledge of 1 specific language in contrast to a language-specific NWRT with which it was compared.

METHOD

One hundred twenty monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI participated (30 per group). A mixed-design analysis of variance was used to investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on the NWRTs. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were conducted to evaluate the instruments' diagnostic value.

RESULTS

Large negative effects of LI were found on both NWRTs, whereas negative effects of bilingualism only occurred on the language-specific NWRT. Both instruments had high clinical accuracy in the monolingual group, but only the Q-U NWRT had high clinical accuracy in the bilingual group.

CONCLUSIONS

This study indicates that the Q-U NWRT is a promising diagnostic tool to help identify LI in bilingual children learning Dutch as a 2nd language. The instrument was clinically accurate in both a monolingual and bilingual group of children and seems better able to disentangle LI from language disadvantage than more language-specific measures.

Production and processing of subject-verb agreement in monolingual Dutch children with specific language impairment

PURPOSE

In this study, the authors investigated whether errors with subject-verb agreement in monolingual Dutch children with specific language impairment (SLI) are influenced by verb phonology. In addition, the productive and receptive abilities of Dutch acquiring children with SLI regarding agreement inflection were compared.

METHOD

An SLI group (6-8 years old), an age-matched group with typical development, and a language-matched, younger, typically developing (TD) group participated in the study. Using an elicitation task, the authors tested use of third person singular inflection after verbs that ended in obstruents (plosive, fricative) or nonobstruents (sonorant). The authors used a self-paced listening task to test sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations.

RESULTS

Omission was more frequent after obstruents than nonobstruents; the younger TD group used inflection less often after plosives than fricatives, unlike the SLI group. The SLI group did not detect subject-verb agreement violations if the ungrammatical structure contained a frequent error (omission), but if the ungrammatical structure contained an infrequent error (substitution), subject-verb agreement violations were noticed.

CONCLUSIONS

The use of agreement inflection by children with TD or SLI is affected by verb phonology. Differential effects in the 2 groups are consistent with a delayed development in Dutch SLI. Parallels between productive and receptive abilities point to weak lexical agreement inflection representations in Dutch SLI.