While there is some evidence of a gap in English writing achievement between children with English as an additional language (EAL) compared to their monolingual English-speaking (EL1) peers, the source of this gap remains unclear. This study examines whether writing presents a specific challenge for children with EAL beyond their oral language and…

Purpose: The aim of the current study was to investigate whether dual language experience modulates processing speed in typically developing (TD) children and in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). We also examined whether processing speed predicted vocabulary and sentence-level abilities in receptive and expressive modalities.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to find morphological markers with good diagnostic accuracy to identify developmental language disorders (DLD) in Spanish-English bilingual children. Method: The participants in this study included 66 Spanish-English bilingual children between the ages of 4;0 and 6;11 (years; months) with (n = 33) and without…

Purpose: The current study examined the role of attention and language ability in nonverbal rule induction performance in a demographically diverse sample of school-age children. Method: The participants included 43 English-speaking monolingual and 65 Spanish-English bilingual children between the ages of 5 and 9 years. Core Language Index…

Purpose: Attention and language are hypothesized to interact in bilingual children and in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). In children who are bilingual, attentional control may be enhanced by repeated experience regulating 2 languages. In children with DLD, subtle weaknesses in sustained attention may relate to impaired…

This study explores typically developing bilingual children's performance in their English as a heritage language. The aim of this study is to advance our understanding of heritage language expectations and the role of chronological age and bilingual exposure. A broad range of receptive and expressive linguistic domains are investigated as a…

This study examined accuracy on syllable-final (coda) consonants in newly-learned English-like nonwords to determine whether school-aged bilingual children may be more vulnerable to making errors on English-only codas than their monolingual, English-speaking peers, even at a stage in development when phonological accuracy in productions of…

We examined the development of 3 executive function (EF) components--inhibition, updating, and task shifting--over time in monolingual and bilingual school-age children. We tested 41 monolingual and 41 simultaneous bilingual typically developing children (ages 8-12) on nonverbal tasks measuring inhibition (the Flanker task), updating (the Corsi…

Clinical Question: When assessing speech sound production of bilingual Mandarin- English speaking children, are standardized measures or informal assessment procedures better for determining whether the child has a speech sound disorder or speech sound difference? Method: Systematic Review Study Sources: Google Scholar, American…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are particularly sensitive to phonological complexity in their language. Their performance drops when there are specific phonological structures or when complexity increases. A nonword repetition (NWR) test, which aims to assess the phonology of bilingual speakers with and without SLI, should…

While little is known about why children make speech errors, it has been hypothesized that cognitive-linguistic factors may underlie phonological speech sound disorders. This study compared the phonological short-term and phonological working memory abilities (using immediate memory tasks) and receptive vocabulary size of 14 monolingual preschool…

We propose that attraction errors in agreement production (e.g., the key to the cabinets are missing) are related to two components of executive control: working memory and inhibitory control. We tested 138 children aged 10 to 12, an age when children are expected to produce high rates of errors. To increase the potential of individual variation…

This study tested the effect of Spanish-accented speech on sentence comprehension in children with different degrees of Spanish experience. The hypothesis was that earlier acquisition of Spanish would be associated with enhanced comprehension of Spanish-accented speech. Three groups of 5-6-year-old children were tested: monolingual…

Bilingual children often show advanced executive functioning (EF) and false belief (FB) understanding compared to monolinguals. The latter has been attributed to their enhanced inhibitory control EF, although this has only been examined in a single study which did not confirm this hypothesis. The current study examined the relation of EF and…

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80…