Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters' social or language status, but not with the raters' age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.

Bilingual Adolescents' Complex Syntax Production in Both Languages Across Conversational and Expository Contexts.

PURPOSE: Bilingual development has been shown to be highly dependent on language-specific exposure. This study extended the study of bilingual development to adolescence and to the production of complex syntax in two contexts: conversation and expository discourse. METHOD: English-French bilinguals (EFbil; n = 27) and French L1 speakers (n = 14) aged 12 to 17 years produced French and English conversational and expository samples. Measures of mean length of T-units and clausal density were used, as well as a measure of detailed subordinate clause diversity developed in this study. RESULTS: Both groups produced more complex syntax in expository discourse compared to conversation and performed very similarly overall. Significant group differences were found in French subordinate clause diversity but not in sentence length or clause density. For EFbil, differences between languages were unexpectedly greater in conversation. Previous language exposure impacted both languages of the EFbil and in both contexts. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to report on the spontaneous syntactic use of bilingual adolescents in both their languages. Subtle but significant differences were found in the syntactic skills of the two groups. Expository and conversational contexts each provided unique information on aspects of complex syntactic development, calling into question the idea that the ability to produce a more complex context guarantees conversational abilities. Finally, for the EFbil, previous language exposure impacted both languages, particularly in conversation. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23713152.

Adolescent language outcomes in a complex trilingual context: When typical does not mean unproblematic.

This study examined the long-term language outcomes of adolescents in the complex multilingual context of Iceland, where children learn Icelandic as a first (L1) or second language (L2), in a background of incidental English from internet and media sources. METHOD: 50 adolescents enrolled in grades 8, 9 and 10 in Reykjavik (Iceland) public schools (27 L1 speakers and 23 L2 speakers) participated. Standardized language tests and language samples were collected in Icelandic and English. Self-ratings and parent ratings of language proficiency were obtained in Icelandic, English and, for L2 speakers, in the home language as well. RESULTS: As in previous studies, L2 speakers scored far below L1 speakers on formal tests of Icelandic, and also in conversation. The groups were similar in their English skills, with both groups scoring far below L1 English norms. Self-rated performance agreed well with measured performance. For the L2 speakers, self-rated performance in the home language was similar to performance in Icelandic and English. L1 speakers demonstrated much higher performance in Icelandic than English; L2 speakers' performance was more evenly distributed over their three languages. DISCUSSION: The considerable English exposure available in Iceland leads to similar English skills for both L1 and L2 groups, but affects their overall language development in different ways. L1 adolescents maintain a clear dominance in Icelandic, whereas the proficiency of the L2 group is more equally distributed across their three languages, leading to unpredictable patterns of language dominance and at the group level, low performance compared to native speaker expectations in all three languages. These language outcomes in adolescence are of great concern as they do not equip the L2 speakers with the functional communication skills they require for further schooling and jobs. The study calls for a reconsideration of typical multilingual outcomes as necessarily implying unproblematic language skills and suggest that language policy changes are required in Iceland to ensure that children graduate compulsory education with solid language skills that allow them to pursue their goals.

How aware is the public of the existence, characteristics and causes of language impairment in childhood and where have they heard about it? A European survey.

Public awareness of language impairment in childhood (Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)) has been identified as an important determiner of research and clinical service delivery, yet studies directly assessing public awareness are lacking. This study surveyed awareness across 18 countries of Europe. METHOD: A questionnaire developed by an international team asked whether respondents had heard of language impairment affecting children, what they thought its manifestations and causes were and where they had heard of it. Respondents were also asked whether they had heard of autism, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD and speech disorder. The questionnaire was administered to members of the public in 18 European countries. A total of 1519 responses were obtained, spanning 6 age groups, 4 educational level groups and 3 income level groups. RESULTS: Across all but one country, significantly fewer people had heard of language impairment than any of the other disorders (or 60 % compared to over 90 % for autism). Awareness tended to be lowest in Eastern Europe and greatest in North-Western Europe, and was influenced by education level, age and income level. People in countries with overall low and overall high awareness differed in their views on manifestations and causes. People had heard of language impairment and autism the same way - most frequently through the media, including Internet, and less frequently through their child's school or a medical professional. DISCUSSION: The study confirms that awareness of language impairment and knowledge of the breadth of its manifestations are low. It also suggests opportunities for how to increase awareness, including greater media coverage of language impairment and more efficient use of venues such as schools and healthcare. Ways in which cultural and linguistic differences may influence public awareness efforts are discussed, including the translatability of clinical labels and scientific terms. These may impact the acceptance of a common term and definition across all countries. As awareness campaigns are gaining momentum, the findings of this study can serve as a baseline against which to compare future findings.

Language-specific effects of task demands on the manifestation of specific language impairment: a comparison of English and Icelandic.

PURPOSE: Previous research has indicated that the manifestation of specific language impairment (SLI) varies according to factors such as language, age, and task. This study examined the effect of task demands on language production in children with SLI cross-linguistically. METHOD: Icelandic- and English-speaking school-age children with SLI and normal language (NL) peers (n = 42) were administered measures of verbal working memory. Spontaneous language samples were collected in contexts that vary in task demands: conversation, narration, and expository discourse. The effect of the context-related task demands on the accuracy of grammatical inflections was examined. RESULTS: Children with SLI in both language groups scored significantly lower than their NL peers in verbal working memory. Nonword repetition scores correlated with morphological accuracy. In both languages, mean length of utterance (MLU) varied systematically across sampling contexts. Context exerted a significant effect on the accuracy of grammatical inflection in English only. Error rates were higher overall in English than in Icelandic, but whether the difference was significant depended on the sampling context. Errors in Icelandic involved verb and noun phrase inflection to a similar extent. CONCLUSIONS: The production of grammatical morphology appears to be more taxing for children with SLI who speak English than for those who speak Icelandic. Thus, whereas children with SLI in both language groups evidence deficits in language processing, cross-linguistic differences are seen in which linguistic structures are vulnerable when processing load is increased. Future research should carefully consider the effect of context on children's language performance.

Specific language impairment in French-speaking children: beyond grammatical morphology.

PURPOSE: Studies on specific language impairment (SLI) in French have identified specific aspects of morphosyntax as particularly vulnerable. However, a cohesive picture of relative strengths and weaknesses characterizing SLI in French has not been established. In light of normative data showing low morphological error rates in the spontaneous language of French-speaking preschoolers, the relative prominence of such errors in SLI in young children was questioned. METHOD: Spontaneous language samples were collected from 12 French-speaking preschool-age children with SLI, as well as 12 children with normal language development matched on age and 12 children with normal language development matched on mean length of utterance. Language samples were analyzed for length of utterance; lexical diversity and composition; diversity of grammatical morphology and morphological errors, including verb finiteness; subject omission; and object clitics. RESULTS: Children with SLI scored lower than age-matched children on all of these measures but similarly to the mean length of utterance-matched controls. Errors in grammatical morphology were very infrequent in all groups, with no significant group differences. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the spontaneous language of French-speaking children with SLI in the preschool age range is characterized primarily by a generalized language impairment and that morphological deficits do not stand out as an area of particular vulnerability, in contrast with the pattern found in English for this age group.

Grammatical morphology is not a sensitive marker of language impairment in Icelandic in children aged 4-14 years.

PURPOSE: Grammatical morphology continues to be widely regarded as an area of extraordinary difficulty in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). A main argument for this view is the purported high diagnostic accuracy of morphological errors for the identification of SLI. However, findings are inconsistent across age groups and across languages. Studies show morphological difficulty to be far less pronounced in more highly inflected languages and the diagnostic accuracy of morphology in such languages is largely unknown. This study examines the morphological use of Icelandic children with and without SLI in a cross-sectional sample of children ranging from preschool age to adolescence and assesses the usefulness of morphology as a clinical marker to identify SLI. METHODS: Participants were 57 monolingual Icelandic-speaking children age 4-14 years; 31 with SLI and 26 with typical language development (TD). Spontaneous language samples were coded for correct and incorrect use of grammatical morphology. The diversity of use of grammatical morphemes was documented for each group at different age and MLU levels. Individual accuracy scores were plotted against age as well as MLU and diagnostic accuracy was calculated. RESULTS: MLU and morphological accuracy increased with age for both children with SLI and TD, with the two groups gradually approaching each other. Morphological diversity and sequence of acquisition was similar across TD and SLI groups compared based on age or MLU. Morphological accuracy was overall high, but was somewhat lower in the SLI group, in particular at ages below 12 years and MLU levels below 6.0. However, overlap between the groups was important in all age groups, involving a greater tendency for errors in both groups at young ages and scores close to or at ceiling at older ages. Sensitivity rates as well as likelihood ratios for each morpheme were all below the range considered acceptable for clinical application, whereas better specificity rates in some age groups for some morphemes indicated that very low scores are indicative of SLI whereas high scores are uninformative. Age effects were evident in that the morphemes varied in the age at which they separate the groups most accurately. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study show that Icelandic children with SLI are somewhat more prone to making morphological errors than their TD counterparts. However, great overlap exists between the groups. The findings call into question the view that grammatical morphology is a central area of deficit in SLI.

Progression of language complexity during treatment with the Lidcombe Program for early stuttering intervention.

The Lidcombe Program is an operant treatment for early stuttering. Outcomes indicate that the program is effective; however, the underlying mechanisms leading to a successful reduction of stuttering remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether fluency achieved with the Lidcombe Program was accompanied by concomitant reduction of utterance length and decreases in linguistic complexity. Standardized language tests were administered pretreatment to 4 male preschool children. Spontaneous language samples were taken 2 weeks prior to treatment, at Weeks 1, 4, 8, and 12 during treatment, and 6 months after the onset of treatment. Samples were analyzed for mean length of utterance (MLU), percentage of simple and complex sentences, number of different words (NDW), and percentage of syllables stuttered. Analysis revealed that all participants presented with language skills in the average and above average range. The children achieved an increase in stutter-free speech accompanied by increases in MLU, percentage of complex sentences, and NDW. For these preschool children who stutter, improved stutter-free speech during treatment with the program appeared to be achieved without a decrease in linguistic complexity. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

The language abilities of bilingual children with Down syndrome.

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have cognitive disabilities resulting from trisomy 21. Language-learning difficulties, especially expressive language problems, are an important component of the phenotype of this population. Many individuals with DS are born into bilingual environments. To date, however, there is almost no information available regarding the capacity of these individuals to acquire more than 1 language. The present study compared the language abilities of 8 children with DS being raised bilingually with those of 3 control groups matched on developmental level: monolingual children with DS (n = 14), monolingual typically developing (TD) children (n = 18), and bilingual TD children (n = 11). All children had at least 100 words in their productive vocabularies but a mean length of utterance of less than 3.5. The bilingual children spoke English and 1 other language and were either balanced bilinguals or English-dominant. English testing was completed for all children using the following: the Preschool Language Scale, Third Edition; language sampling; and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). Bilingual children were also tested in the second language using a vocabulary comprehension test, the CDI, and language sampling. Results provided evidence of a similar profile of language abilities in bilingual children as has been documented for monolingual children with DS. There was no evidence of a detrimental effect of bilingualism. That is, the bilingual children with DS scored at least as well on all English tests as their monolingual DS counterparts. Nonetheless, there was considerable diversity in the second-language abilities demonstrated by these individuals with DS. Clinical implications are addressed.

The relationship between bilingual exposure and morphosyntactic development.

PURPOSE: The study examined the effect of bilingual input on the grammatical development of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual peers. METHOD: Spontaneous language samples were collected in English and French from typically-developing bilingual and monolingual pre-schoolers aged 3 years (n = 56) and 5 years (n = 83). Within each age group, children varied in bilingual exposure patterns but were matched on age, non-verbal cognition, maternal education and language status, speaking two majority languages. Measures included mean length of utterance (MLU) in words and morphemes, and accuracy and diversity of morphological use. RESULT: Grammatical development in each language was strongly influenced by amount of same-language experience. Children with equal exposure to both languages scored comparably to monolingual children in both languages, whereas children with unequal exposure evidenced similarly unequal performance across languages and scored significantly lower than monolinguals in their weaker language. Scoring significantly lower than monolinguals in both languages may, therefore, be a sign of language impairment. Each language followed a strongly language-specific sequence of acquisition and error patterns. Five-year-old children with low exposure to English displayed an optional infinitive pattern, a strong clinical marker for Primary Language Impairment in monolingual English-speaking children. CONCLUSION: Descriptive normative data are presented that permit more accurate interpretation of bilingual assessment data.

Language exposure in bilingual toddlers: performance on nonword repetition and lexical tasks.

PURPOSE: The amount of language exposure is correlated with bilingual lexical development, but findings are mixed on how exposure relates to nonword repetition (NWR), a complex skill involving both short-term processing and long-term vocabulary knowledge. We extend previous work to a younger age group by investigating the role of exposure on NWR versus vocabulary, along with the effect of item construction and scoring. METHOD: Sixty typically developing children (ages 2;5-3;6[years;months]) were assessed for NWR and receptive and expressive vocabulary. Participants ranged in amount of previous exposure to English and French from 0% to 100% and were tested in both languages if able to participate, even with very limited exposure (28 completed testing in both languages, 11 completed testing in English only, 21 completed testing in French only). RESULTS: Correlational analyses showed moderate to strong associations between the amount of exposure and vocabulary in that language, whereas the relationship of exposure with NWR was weak or nonsignificant, depending on scoring method. NWR correlated with vocabulary in English only. Performance on NWR was affected by nonword length but unaffected by wordlikeness. CONCLUSIONS: NWR and vocabulary were differently related to language exposure. The underlying mechanisms of NWR at this age appeared mainly reliant on short-term processes, in contrast to long-term vocabulary knowledge.

Monolingual or bilingual intervention for primary language impairment? A randomized control trial.

PURPOSE: This study investigated the clinical effectiveness of monolingual versus bilingual language intervention, the latter involving speech-language pathologist-parent collaboration. The study focuses on methods that are currently being recommended and that are feasible within current clinical contexts. METHOD: Bilingual children with primary language impairment who speak a minority language as their home language and French as their second (n=29, mean age=5 years) were randomly assigned to monolingual treatment, bilingual treatment, and no-treatment (delayed-treatment) conditions. Sixteen sessions of individual language intervention were offered, targeting vocabulary and syntactic skills in French only or bilingually, through parent collaboration during the clinical sessions. Language evaluations were conducted before and after treatment by blinded examiners; these evaluations targeted French as well as the home languages. An additional evaluation was conducted 2 months after completion of treatment to assess maintenance of gains. Both monolingual and bilingual treatment followed a focused stimulation approach. RESULTS: Results in French showed a significant treatment effect for vocabulary but no difference between treatment conditions. Gains were made in syntax, but these gains could not be attributed to treatment given that treatment groups did not improve more than the control group. Home language probes did not suggest that the therapy had resulted in gains in the home language. CONCLUSIONS: The intervention used in this study is in line with current recommendations of major speech-language pathology organizations. However, the findings indicate that the bilingual treatment created through collaboration with parents was not effective in creating a sufficiently intense bilingual context to make it significantly different from the monolingual treatment. Further studies are needed to assess the gains associated with clinical modifications made for bilingual children and to search for effective ways to accommodate their unique needs.

The effect of bilingual exposure versus language impairment on nonword repetition and sentence imitation scores.

PURPOSE: Nonword repetition (NWR) and sentence imitation (SI) are increasingly used as diagnostic tools for the identification of Primary Language Impairment (PLI). They may be particularly promising diagnostic tools for bilingual children if performance on them is not highly affected by bilingual exposure. Two studies were conducted which examined (1) the effect of amount of bilingual exposure on performance on French and English nonword repetition and sentence imitation in 5-year-old French-English bilingual children and (2) the diagnostic accuracy of the French versions of these measures and of receptive vocabulary in 5-year-old monolingual French-speakers and bilingual speakers with and without PLI, carefully matched on language exposure. METHOD: Study 1 included 84 5-year-olds acquiring French and English simultaneously, differing in their amount of exposure to the two languages but equated on age, nonverbal cognition and socio-economic status. Children were administered French and English tests of NWR and SI. In Study 2, monolingual and bilingual children with and without PLI (four groups, n=14 per group) were assessed for NWR, SI, and receptive vocabulary in French to determine diagnostic accuracy. RESULTS: Study 1: Both processing measures, but in particular NWR, were less affected by previous exposure than vocabulary measures. Bilingual children with varying levels of exposure were unaffected by the length of nonwords. Study 2: In contrast to receptive vocabulary, NWR and SI correctly distinguished children with PLI from children with typical development (TD) regardless of bilingualism. Sensitivity levels were acceptable, but specificity was lower. CONCLUSIONS: Bilingual children perform differently than children with PLI on NWR and SI. In contrast to children with PLI, bilingual children with a large range of previous exposure levels achieve high NWR scores and are unaffected by the length of the nonwords. LEARNING OUTCOMES: Readers will recognize the effect of language input on the rate of language development, focusing specifically on how bilingual exposure affects the language learning of each language of bilingual children.

The acquisition of consonants in Québécois French: a cross-sectional study of pre-school aged children.

This study provides a systematic description of French consonant acquisition in a large cohort of pre-school aged children: 156 children aged 20-53 months participated in a picture-naming task. Five analyses were conducted to study consonant acquisition: (1) consonant inventory, (2) consonant accuracy, (3) consonant acquisition, (4) a comparison of consonant inventory to consonant acquisition, and (5) a comparison to English cross-sectional data. Results revealed that more consonants emerge at an earlier age in word initial position, followed by medial position, and then word final position. Consonant accuracy underwent the greatest changes before the age of 36 months, and achieved a relative plateau towards 42 months. The acquisition of consonants revealed that four early consonants were acquired before the age of 36 months (i.e., /t, m, n, z/); 12 intermediate consonants were acquired between 36 and 53 months (i.e., /p, b, d, k, g, ν, f, v, [symbol in text], l, w, ч/); and four consonants were acquired after 53 months (/s, з, ∫, j/). In comparison to English data, language specific patterns emerged that influence the order and pace of phonological acquisition. These findings highlight the important role of language specific developmental data in understanding the course of consonant acquisition.

Sensitivity and specificity of French language and processing measures for the identification of primary language impairment at age 5.

PURPOSE: Research on the diagnostic accuracy of different language measures has focused primarily on English. This study examined the sensitivity and specificity of a range of measures of language knowledge and language processing for the identification of primary language impairment (PLI) in French-speaking children. Because of the lack of well-documented language measures in French, it is difficult to accurately identify affected children, and thus research in this area is impeded. METHOD: The performance of 14 monolingual French-speaking children with confirmed, clinically identified PLI (M = 61.4 months of age, SD = 7.2 months) on a range of language and language processing measures was compared with the performance of 78 children with confirmed typical language development (M age = 58.9 months, SD = 5.7). These included evaluations of receptive vocabulary, receptive grammar, spontaneous language, narrative production, nonword repetition, sentence imitation, following directions, rapid automatized naming, and digit span. Sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios were determined at 3 cutoff points: (a) -1 SD, (b) -1.28 SD, and (b) -2 SD below mean values. Receiver operator characteristic curves were used to identify the most accurate cutoff for each measure. RESULTS: Significant differences between the PLI and typical language development groups were found for the majority of the language measures, with moderate to large effect sizes. The measures differed in their sensitivity and specificity, as well as in which cutoff point provided the most accurate decision. Ideal cutoff points were in most cases between the mean and -1 SD. Sentence imitation and following directions appeared to be the most accurate measures. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence that standardized measures of language and language processing provide accurate identification of PLI in French. The results are strikingly similar to previous results for English, suggesting that in spite of structural differences between the languages, PLI in both languages involves a generalized language delay across linguistic domains, which can be identified in a similar way using existing standardized measures.

Towards evidence-based practice in language intervention for bilingual children.

UNLABELLED: Evidence-based practice requires that clinical decisions be based on evidence from rigorously controlled research studies. At this time, very few studies have directly examined the efficacy of clinical intervention methods for bilingual children. Clinical decisions for this population cannot, therefore, be based on the strongest forms of research evidence, but must be inferred from other sources. This article reviews the available intervention research on bilingual children, the current clinical recommendations for this population, and the strength of the empirical and theoretical support on which these recommendations are based. Finally, future directions are suggested for documenting current methods of intervention and developing optimal methods for different groups of bilingual children. Although the current research base is limited, the few studies available to date uniformly suggest that interventions that include a focus on both languages are superior to those that focus on only one language. The available research offers little guidance, however, as to the particular treatment methods that may be most appropriate. Further research is required to examine efficacy with larger numbers of children and children of various bilingual backgrounds. It is suggested that efforts to develop and test intervention methods for bilingual children must carefully consider the linguistic heterogeneity of bilingual children and the cultural variation in communication styles, child rearing practices, and child rearing beliefs. This will lead to the development of methods that may involve treatment methods that are more suitable for other languages and cultures. LEARNING OUTCOMES: Readers will become familiar with current recommendations for the treatment of bilingual children with language impairment, including which language or languages to use, the requirement for cultural sensitivity, and specific procedures that may be beneficial for bilingual populations. The heterogeneity of the bilingual population of children is highlighted. Readers will gain an understanding of the strength of research evidence backing up recommended practices, as well as of gaps in our current knowledge base and directions for further development and research.

Neurological and magnetic resonance imaging findings in children with developmental language impairment.

Neurologic and radiologic findings in children with well-defined developmental language impairment have rarely been systematically assessed. Children aged 7 to 13 years with developmental language impairment or normal language (controls) underwent language, nonverbal cognitive, motor and neurological assessments, standardized assessment for subtle neurological signs, and magnetic resonance imaging. Nine children with developmental language impairment and 12 controls participated. No focal abnormalities were identified on standard neurological examination. Age and developmental language impairment were independent predictors of neurological subtle signs scores (r(2) = 0.52). Imaging abnormalities were identified in two boys with developmental language impairment and no controls (P = .17). Lesions identified were predicted neither by history nor by neurological examination. Previously unsuspected lesions were identified in almost 25% of children with developmental language impairment. Constraints regarding cooperation and sedation requirements may limit the clinical application of imaging modalities in this population.

The clinical spectrum of developmental language impairment in school-aged children: language, cognitive, and motor findings.

OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to evaluate detailed school-age language, nonverbal cognitive, and motor development in children with developmental language impairment compared with age-matched controls. METHODS: Children with developmental language impairment or normal language development (controls) aged 7 to 13 years were recruited. Children underwent language assessment (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4, Peabody Picture Vocabulary-3, Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-2), nonverbal cognitive assessment (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV), and motor assessment (Movement Assessment Battery for Children). Exclusion criteria were nonverbal IQ below the 5th percentile or an acquired language, hearing, autistic spectrum, or neurologic disorder. RESULTS: Eleven children with developmental language impairment (7:4 boys/girls; mean age: 10.1 +/- 0.8 years) and 12 controls (5:7 boys/girls; mean age: 9.5 +/- 1.8 years) were recruited. Children with developmental language impairment showed lower mean scores on language (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4--developmental language impairment: 79.7 +/- 16.5; controls: 109.2 +/- 9.6; Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-2--developmental language impairment: 94.1 +/- 10.6; controls: 104.0 +/- 2.8; Peabody Picture Vocabulary-3--developmental language impairment: 90.5 +/- 13.8; controls: 100.1 +/- 11.6), cognitive (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV--developmental language impairment: 99.5 +/- 15.5; controls: 113.5 +/- 11.9), and motor measures (Movement Assessment Battery for Children percentile--developmental language impairment: 12.7 +/- 16.7; controls: 66.1 +/- 30.6) and greater discrepancies between cognitive and language scores (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV/Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4--developmental language impairment: 17.8 +/- 17.8; controls: 1.2 +/- 12.7). Motor impairment was more common in children with developmental language impairment (70%) than controls (8%). CONCLUSIONS: Developmental language impairment is characterized by a broad spectrum of developmental impairments. Children identified on the basis of language impairment show significant motor comorbidity. Motor assessment should form part of the evaluation and follow-up of children with developmental language impairment.

Early lexical and syntactic development in Quebec French and English: implications for cross-linguistic and bilingual assessment.

BACKGROUND: Although a number of studies have been conducted on normal acquisition in French, systematic methods for analysis of French and normative group data have been lacking. AIMS: To develop a systematic method for the analysis of language samples in Quebec French, and to provide preliminary normative data on early lexical and syntactic development in French with a comparison with English. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Language samples were collected for groups of monolingual French- and English-speaking children (n=39, age range 21-47 months) with normal language development. Coding conventions for French were developed based on similar principles as English SALT conventions. However, due to structural differences between the languages, coding of inflectional morphology was considerably more complex in French than in English. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The French procedure provided developmentally sensitive measures of lexical and syntactic development, including mean length of utterance in morphemes and in words, and number of different words, and should be an important addition to the assessment procedures available for French. Cross-linguistic similarities and differences were noted in the language sample measures. Although the same elicitation context was used in the English and the French language samples, and the analysis methods were designed to rest on similar principles across languages, systematic differences emerged such that the French-speaking children exhibited a higher mean length of utterance, but smaller vocabulary sizes. Differences were also noted in error patterns, with much lower error rates occurring in samples of the French-speaking children. CONCLUSIONS: The findings have important implications for language assessment involving cross-linguistic comparisons, such as occurs in the assessment of bilingual children, and in the matching of participants in cross-linguistic studies. Given differences in the mean length of utterance and vocabulary scores across the languages, the finding of the same mean length of utterance or vocabulary obtained in the two languages for a given bilingual child or for monolingual speakers of the two languages does not imply equivalent levels of language development in the two languages.

Content mazes and filled pauses in narrative language samples of children with specific language impairment.

Linguistic nonfluencies known as mazes (filled pauses, repetitions, revisions, and abandoned utterances) have been used to draw inferences about processing difficulties associated with the production of language. In children with normal language development (NL), maze frequency in general increases with linguistic complexity, being greater in narrative than conversational contexts and in longer utterances. The same tendency has been found for children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, the frequency of mazes produced by children with NL and SLI has not been compared directly at equivalent utterance lengths in narration. This study compared the frequency of filled pauses and content mazes in narrative language samples of school-age children with SLI. The children with SLI used significantly more content mazes than the children with NL, but fewer filled pauses. Unlike content mazes, the frequency of filled pauses remained stable across samples of different utterance lengths among children with SLI. This indicates that filled pauses and content mazes have different origins and should not be analyzed or interpreted in the same way.