This Family and Practitioner Brief discusses how deaf children who have not had access to a complete language from birth often encounter unique challenges in developing academic language skills, particularly in the realm of inference-making.

A good deal of research purports that bilingualism has a positive effect on some aspects of cognitive functioning. However, this effect is not consistent, and little research examines trajectories of cognitive skill development in bilingual children. Moreover, it remains unclear whether different types of bilingualism impact how cognitive…