Fine-grained differences in gender-cue strength affect predictive processing in children: Cross-linguistic evidence from Russian and Bulgarian.

We tested predictive gender agreement processing in adjective-noun phrases by 45 4- to 6-year-old Russian- and Bulgarian-speaking children using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm. Russian and Bulgarian are closely related languages that have three genders but differ in the nature and number of gender cues on adjectives. Analysis of the proportion and time course of looks to the target noun showed that only Bulgarian children used gender cues to predict the upcoming noun. We argue that the cross-linguistic difference in the gender cue strength is revealed through the operation of economy, transparency, and interdependence in a gender complexity matrix. The documented advantage for Bulgarian children in gender agreement processing and acquisition underscores the need for a comparative language acquisition approach to typologically close languages.

Assessment of Developmental Language Disorder in Multilingual Children: Results from an International Survey.

INTRODUCTION: The Multilingual-Multicultural Affairs Committee of the International Association of Communication Disorders (IALP) conducted a survey of diagnostic criteria for developmental language disorder (DLD) in multilingual children to discover how clinicians apply terminology and diagnostic criteria to multilingual children in different parts of the world. METHODS: An international web survey was used to survey 354 participants from 44 countries about their assessment practices, and clinical opinions about assessing multilingual children for DLD. RESULTS: The findings show that most clinicians felt confident in assessing multilingual children, and they applied the DLD terminology and inclusionary criteria to multilingual children with difficulty learning language. Clinicians used different procedures to assess heritage and societal languages. Barriers to access to services included a lack of knowledge by parents and referral sources about services available and typical multilingual development, with additional reasons differing by geographical region. DISCUSSION: Speech pathologists across the globe have many similarities in the way that they assess multilingual children. Differences may be attributed to clinical experience, professional education, the clinician's role, the system they work in, and the clinician's own language skills. This paper advances knowledge of current clinical practices, which can be used to evaluate frameworks in international and national contexts, with implications for policy and practice to improve access to clinical services.

Non-Word Repetition in Arabic-speaking children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A closer look into accuracy and error patterns.

Non-Word Repetition (NWR) tasks effectively identify language impairments and assess phonological skills across diverse populations and languages, including Arabic. Prior research revealed heterogeneity of performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on NWR tasks. The current study is the first to evaluate phonological skills of Palestinian-Arabic-speaking children with and without ASD, employing a Palestinian-Arabic NWR task. A total of 142 Palestinian-Arabic-speaking children, aged 5-11 participated in the study, including 75 children with Typical Language Development (TLD) and 67 children with ASD. The NWR task included 18 non-words of varying length (1-4 syllables) and complexity (with and without consonant clusters). Quantitative analysis examined the effects of length and phonological complexity on the NWR accuracy scores in children with TLD and ASD. Error pattern analysis accounting for phoneme and syllable substitutions/deletions/additions and lexicalisations aimed to shed light on the phonological representations of children with and without ASD. Within the ASD group, two subgroups emerged: 72% exhibited age-appropriate NWR performance, while 28% showed performance at-risk for phonological impairment. Non-word length, rather than complexity, significantly influenced the children's performance. Consonant substitution was the most frequent error pattern across all groups. On the theoretical side, these findings extend cross-linguistic evidence of phonological skill heterogeneity in children with ASD to Arabic-speaking children. Additionally, they highlight an overall delayed but qualitatively similar pattern of phonological development in children with ASD. On the clinical side, results underscore the importance of comprehensive language assessment in children with ASD.

Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions.

This article reviews the current knowledge state on pragmatic and structural language abilities in autism and their potential relation to extralinguistic abilities and autistic traits. The focus is on questions regarding autism language profiles with varying degrees of (selective) impairment and with respect to potential comorbidity of autism and language impairment: Is language impairment in autism the co-occurrence of two distinct conditions (comorbidity), a consequence of autism itself (no comorbidity), or one possible combination from a series of neurodevelopmental properties (dimensional approach)? As for language profiles in autism, three main groups are identified, namely, (i) verbal autistic individuals without structural language impairment, (ii) verbal autistic individuals with structural language impairment, and (iii) minimally verbal autistic individuals. However, this tripartite distinction hides enormous linguistic heterogeneity. Regarding the nature of language impairment in autism, there is currently no model of how language difficulties may interact with autism characteristics and with various extralinguistic cognitive abilities. Building such a model requires carefully designed explorations that address specific aspects of language and extralinguistic cognition. This should lead to a fundamental increase in our understanding of language impairment in autism, thereby paving the way for a substantial contribution to the question of how to best characterize neurodevelopmental disorders.

Individual Differences in Bilingual Child Language Acquisition: A plunge into a Complex and Dynamic Network.

Large individual differences in language skills are well documented in monolingual children (e.g., Kidd, Donnelly & Christiansen, 2018). In bilinguals, the broad variation is even more pronounced. Interestingly, some bilingual children might be weak in their Heritage Language (HL, also labeled as Minority Language, Home Language, Community Language), to which they have naturalistic exposure from birth. Others might be weak in their Societal Language (SL), the language of the surrounding and educational environment. Large individual differences are observed in neurotypical bilingually exposed children as well as in their bilingually raised peers with developmental language disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and hearing impairment (see also Armon-Lotem & Meir, 2016; Meir & Novogrodsky, 2020). Figure 1 visualizes individual differences in morphosyntactic skills of monolingual and bilingual children with typical language development aged 5;5-6;8 as indexed by the LITMUS Sentence Repetition tasks (the data are drawn from Armon-Lotem & Meir, 2016; Meir, 2018). While monolingual preschool children (MonoRU and MonoHE) show little variation, bilinguals with different levels of dominance (balanced bilinguals: BB; HL dominant: HL-D; SL dominant: SL-D) as determined by standardized tests exhibit large individual differences within each language and across their two languages.

Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A study of informativeness and definiteness.

The current study evaluated the separate and combined effects of bilingualism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on informativeness and definiteness marking of referential expressions. Hebrew-speaking monolingual children (21 with ASD and 28 with typical language development) and Russian-Hebrew-speaking bilingual children (13 with ASD and 30 with typical language development) aged 4-9 years participated. Informativeness, indexed by referential contrasts, was affected by ASD, but not by bilingualism. Definiteness use was non-target-like in children with ASD and in bilingual children, and it was mainly predicted by children's morpho-syntactic abilities in Hebrew. Language-universal and language-specific properties of referential use are discussed.

Using a monolingual screening test for assessing bilingual children.

Bilingual language development is different from monolingual language development. The lack of appropriate assessment tools geared to the bilingual population has led to inaccurate over-diagnosis of bilingual children with typical language development (TLD) as children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and under-diagnosis of bilingual children with DLD. The present paper addresses this challenge by focusing on Hebrew as a second language (L2) of bilingual preschool children whose first language (L1) is either English or Russian, taking into consideration both chronological age (CA) and age of onset of bilingualism (AOB). This study aimed to generate bilingual standards for a monolingual screening test, Goralnik Screening Test for Hebrewby arriving at appropriate bilingual typical development cut-off points. A total of 443 bilingual Hebrew speaking children (397 with TLD and 46 with DLD), ages 61-78 months (M = 70; SD = 4), 199 with L1 English and 244 with L1 Russian, took part in the study. The results demonstrate low diagnostic accuracy when a monolingual test with monolingual norms is used for bilingual children, in contrast with increased diagnostic accuracy when bilingual standards are used for bilingual children. The paper concludes by showing the importance of bilingual standards when assessing clinical populations with varying ages of acquisition, and in particular, for those who were exposed to their second language after the age of four.

Language assessment of monolingual and multilingual children using non-word and sentence repetition tasks.

The number of children speaking more than one language as well as the number of languages spoken in Ireland has increased significantly posing a problem for timely identification of children with language disorder. The current study aims to profile performance of monolingual and multilingual children on language processing tasks: non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR). We used: (1) Crosslinguistic (CL) and English Language-Specific (LS) NWR and (2) SR in English, Polish and Russian. Children's socioeconomic status, language emergence, the age of exposure (AoE) to English and the percentage of English spoken at home were recorded. The study included 88 children age 5-8 attending a school in a disadvantaged area.CL and LS NWR yielded similar distribution of scores for monolinguals and multilinguals. The tasks identified small number of children who performed significantly lower than the mean while there were no significant differences between the groups. In English SR, monolinguals significantly outperformed multilinguals. Comparison of SR in English and Polish/Russian indicated that some children showed balanced performance in both of their languages while others showed marked differences performing better in either Polish/Russian or English depending on their AoE to English and percentage of English spoken at home.The pilot study suggests that CL-NWR is a promising screening tool for identifying monolingual and multilingual children with language disorder while SR provides more detailed information on children's language performance relative to their language exposure. SR task is recommended to be used only if comparable tasks are available in all of children's languages.

Morphosyntactic abilities of toddlers with hearing impairment and normal hearing: evidence from a sentence-repetition task.

BACKGROUND: While considerable research exists on morphosyntax of school-age children with hearing impairment (HI), little is known about development of morphosyntax at younger ages. Some studies show that young children with HI have a delay in language abilities compared with children with normal hearing (NH); conversely, other studies show evidence that they achieve age-appropriate language development. AIMS: To investigate whether characteristics of morphosyntactic development displayed by young children with HI are unique or whether they are similar to those of NH children. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Fifty-four Hebrew-speaking children (15 with HI and 39 with NH), aged 22-40 months, completed a novel Hebrew sentence repetition (SRep) task designed to evaluate morphosyntactic abilities. Accuracy on the total correct structure, repetition of content and function words, and repetition of specific morphemes were compared across groups. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: At the earliest stages of combining words to sentences, toddlers in both groups showed a large variation in morphosyntactic development, with no significant difference between the two groups. Children with HI and NH showed similar results for the acquisition of morphemes and various syntactic structures. In the group of children with HI, hearing capability accounted for 28% of the variance of the SRep task. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The findings suggest typical morphosyntax capacity at the onset of language development among of children with HI who are diagnosed early and receive intensive intervention.

Diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks for the identification of specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children: evidence from Russian and Hebrew.

BACKGROUND: Previous research demonstrates that repetition tasks are valuable tools for diagnosing specific language impairment (SLI) in monolingual children in English and a variety of other languages, with non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SRep) yielding high levels of sensitivity and specificity. Yet, only a few studies have addressed the diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks in bilingual children, and most available research focuses on English-Spanish sequential bilinguals. AIMS: To evaluate the efficacy of three repetition tasks (forward digit span (FWD), NWR and SRep) in order to distinguish mono- and bilingual children with and without SLI in Russian and Hebrew. METHODS & PROCEDURES: A total of 230 mono- and bilingual children aged 5;5-6;8 participated in the study: 144 bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking children (27 with SLI); and 52 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children (14 with SLI) and 34 monolingual Russian-speaking children (14 with SLI). Parallel repetition tasks were designed in both Russian and Hebrew. Bilingual children were tested in both languages. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The findings confirmed that NWR and SRep are valuable tools in distinguishing monolingual children with and without SLI in Russian and Hebrew, while the results for FWD were mixed. Yet, testing of bilingual children with the same tools using monolingual cut-off points resulted in inadequate diagnostic accuracy. We demonstrate, however, that the use of bilingual cut-off points yielded acceptable levels of diagnostic accuracy. The combination of SRep tasks in L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew yielded the highest overall accuracy (i.e., 94%), but even SRep alone in L2/Hebrew showed excellent levels of sensitivity (i.e., 100%) and specificity (i.e., 89%), reaching 91% of total diagnostic accuracy. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The results are very promising for identifying SLI in bilingual children and for showing that testing in the majority language with bilingual cut-off points can provide an accurate classification.

Disfluencies as a Window into Pragmatic Skills in Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Autistic and Non-Autistic Children.

There is little research on the production of speech disfluencies such as silent pauses, repetitions, self-corrections, and filled pauses (e.g., eh, em) in monolingual autistic children, and there is no data on this crucial part of speech production in bilingual autistic children. This study aims to address this gap by examining disfluency production in bilingual autistic and non-autistic children across two linguistically distinct languages, HL-Russian (the home language) and SL-Hebrew (the societal language). Fifty-one bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking autistic and non-autistic children aged 5-9 (autistic: n = 21; non-autistic: n = 30), matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, participated in picture-based story-generation tasks (LITMUS MAIN, Gagarina et al., ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 63:1-36, 2019). Audio recordings of narrative samples were transcribed, coded, and scored for eleven disfluency types using CLAN tools. The non-autistic group produced higher overall disfluency rate than the autistic group. The autistic group exhibited fewer filled and silent pauses than the non-autistic group in HL-Russian. Furthermore, non-autistic children manifested varied distribution of disfluency types across languages, while autistic children displayed more consistent patterns across languages. In summary, we replicated findings from previous research on monolinguals only partly, as no between-group difference in filled pauses was found in SL-Hebrew. Additionally, bilingual autistic children exhibited language-universal patterns of disfluency production, whereas their non-autistic peers displayed language-specific patterns.

Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in the war-affected migrant and refugee communities in Austria and Germany: a survey-based study on language attitudes.

Introduction: This paper provides an initial exploration of Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in the context of the war-affected migration from Ukraine to Austria and Germany. While extensive research exists on various aspects of Ukrainian- Russian bilingualism in relation to Ukraine itself, thus far no studies have been conducted on this bilingualism in the diasporic context, i.e., as a language of the first and subsequential generations with a migrant background in Austria and Germany. Methods: To address this research gap, our paper examines the language attitudes of two respondent groups with a Ukrainian background in the two countries: migrants and refugees who left Ukraine after 2014 and those who left after Russia's invasion in February 2022. In the framework of a sociolinguistic survey, we describe their current attitudes regarding the use of Ukrainian and Russian, among others, in relation to the actual and intended use of the language(s) in the multilingual context of migration. The survey eliciting information on demographic information, language proficiency, language attitudes and language use was conducted on 406 Ukrainians in two host countries (Austria: n = 103; Germany: n = 306). First, we compared self-rated proficiency in Ukrainian and Russian as well as attitudes and use of these languages. Second, we applied a network modelling analysis to determine the nature of relationships between these variables. Results and discussion: The results indicated that proficiency in Ukrainian and in Russian were the strongest nodes in the model affecting language use and language attitudes toward the respective languages. Our data analysis focused on the pragmatic and symbolic value of Russian and Ukrainian playing a crucial role in the language vitality in multilingual settings. The paper discusses the imbalanced correlation of the symbolic and pragmatic value of Ukrainian and Russian in the diasporic Ukrainian communities. While Ukrainian has gained a higher symbolic status, Russian maintains a better pragmatic one, despite its negative symbolic status. However, we anticipate that the increasing symbolic value of Ukrainian and the diminishing value of Russian will lead to an increase in the use of Ukrainian also in Russian-dominant bilingual groups of Ukrainian migrants and refugees, even as an insider-code in hermetic minority groups.

Morphosyntactic skills in Arabic-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from error patterns in the sentence repetition task.

Background and aims: Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has not traditionally been associated with morphosyntactic impairments, some children with ASD manifest significant difficulties in this domain. Sentence Repetition (SRep) tasks are highly reliable tools for detecting morphosyntactic impairment in different languages and across various populations, including children with ASD. This study is among the first to evaluate morphosyntactic abilities of Palestinian-Arabic (PA) speaking children using a PA SRep task. Methods: A total of 142 PA-speaking children, aged 5-11, participated in the study: 75 children with typical language development (TLD) and 67 children with ASD. The PA SRep task targeted morphosyntactic structures of varying complexity (simple subject-verb-object [SVO] sentences, biclausal sentences, wh-questions, relative clauses). Children's accuracy scores were assessed across these structures and error patterns encompassing morphosyntactic and pragmatic aspects were analyzed. Results: Two subgroups of ASD emerged: 43% showed age-appropriate language skills (ASD + NL) pairing up with TLD peers, while 57% showed signs of morphosyntactic impairment (ASD + LI). Children in both groups exhibited a higher frequency of morphosyntactic errors than pragmatic ones. Children with ASD + LI showed difficulties with producing complex morphosyntactic structures, such as relative clauses and object wh-questions. Error analysis revealed that children in the ASD + LI group produced sentence fragments and simplified constructions when complex structures were targeted. Conclusions: The current study extends the cross-linguistic evidence of the heterogeneity of morphosyntactic profiles in children with ASD to Arabic-speaking children. Error analysis indicates that poor morphosyntax, rather than pragmatics, challenges children's performance on the SRep task. Implications: Our results emphasize the importance of comprehensive language assessment in children with ASD and underscore the need for tailored intervention plans targeting impaired morphosyntactic structures in some children with ASD.

Modeling lexical abilities of heritage language and L2 speakers of Hebrew and English in Israel and the United States: a network approach.

Introduction: This paper examines the productive vocabulary skills of five groups of English-Hebrew bilinguals in Israel and the United States. The juxtaposition of these five groups allows us to simultaneously compare performance across dominance profiles, acquisition contexts (L2 learned in school, HL maintained at home, immigration and immersion), and countries (Israel and the USA). Methods: A total of 185 participants took part in study: Hebrew-dominant heritage English speakers, Hebrew-dominant L2-English speakers, English-dominant heritage Hebrew speakers, and English-dominant L2-Hebrew speakers in the US and in Israel. They were all administered the MINT assessment in both languages, as well as background questionnaires. We then employ network modeling based on a secondary data analysis of background questionnaires to consider how each group's lexical proficiency ties in to reported input factors. Results and discussion: The MINT results indicate clear language dominance in all the groups except Hebrew-dominant heritage English speakers, who show balanced proficiency in both their languages. The network models indicate key distinctions between the groups as a function of linguistic context, and we assess our findings in the context of recent work on quantifying the bilingual experience.

Language abilities, not cognitive control, predict language mixing behavior in bilingual speakers with aphasia.

PURPOSE: Language Mixing (LM) occurs among neurotypical bilinguals as well as among bilingual persons with aphasia (BiPWAs). The current study aimed to investigate whether LM in BiPWAs stems from a linguistic impairment, an impairment in cognitive control, or both. METHOD: Twenty Russian-Hebrew-speaking BiPWAs were split into two groups based on aphasia severity (Severe/Moderate vs. Mild). Frequencies and patterns of LM in narrative production by BiPWAs in L1-Russian and in L2-Hebrew were analyzed. To investigate the underlying mechanisms of LM, all participants completed linguistic background questionnaires, the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) in both languages, and a battery of 10 cognitive tests. RESULTS: The results indicated an effect of aphasia severity and an effect of language. Higher LM frequency was observed in BiPWAs with severe/moderate aphasia symptoms as compared to BiPWAs with mild symptoms. In both groups, higher LM frequency was observed in L2-Hebrew narratives, the weaker post-stroke language for most participants in the sample. The results also showed qualitative LM differences in L1-Russsian and L2-Hebrew contexts. In L1-Russian narratives, BiPWAs mainly switched to L2-Hebrew nouns, while in L2-Hebrew narratives, they mainly inserted L1-Russian discourse markers and function words. CONCLUSIONS: Linguistic factors such as pre- and post-stroke self-rated language proficiency and level of language impairment due to aphasia were found to predict LM frequency in L1-Russian and in L2-Hebrew. Cognitive abilities did not predict LM frequency. Based on our findings, we suggest that LM behavior in BiPWAs might be primarily related to language skills in L1 and L2, rather than to cognitive control impairments.

Requests and apologies in two languages among bilingual speakers: A comparison of heritage English speakers and English- and Hebrew-dominant bilinguals.

Introduction: Linguistic research over the last two decades has uncovered a significant number of properties that identify heritage language (HL) speakers as a particular phenomenon within bilingualism. However, despite the rapid development of HL research, the sphere of HL speech act pragmatics is still in its infancy. Methodology: The current study sought to cover part of this gap by investigating both languages of HL adult speakers for whom English is their HL and Hebrew is their dominant societal language (SL; n = 20, hereafter HS) in comparison with two other groups: Hebrew-dominant speakers who were born to Hebrew-speaking families and raised in Israel, and thus English is the language of their schooling (n = 20, hereafter HEB-D), and English-dominant speakers who were born to English-speaking families and immigrated to Israel from an English-speaking country after the age of 18, and thus Hebrew is their L2 (n = 20, hereafter ENG-D). The discourse-pragmatic tasks in English and in Hebrew consisted of the same 36 scenarios eliciting requests and apologies in each language. Each request was followed by an apology that is related. Results: The results indicated that Hebrew-dominant speakers and English-dominant speakers, i.e., HEB-D and ENG-D, had different strategies for the realization of requests and apologies which they systematically transferred from their dominant language into their weaker one, confirming the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences between request and apology realizations in English and in Hebrew. However, the picture was more complex for the HL speakers in their HL-English and SL-Hebrew as in some cases their strategies paired up with the ENG-D in English, and with the HEB-D in Hebrew, while in other cases they developed a unique and hybrid linguistic style reflecting the strategies of both languages. Discussion: The investigation of both languages of HL speakers enabled us to compare features of the two linguistic systems and make conclusions about their nature.

Child Heritage Language Development: An Interplay Between Cross-Linguistic Influence and Language-External Factors.

The current study investigated the mechanisms of heritage language (HL) development with a focus on case morphology. First, the effects of cross-linguistic influence (i.e., the influence of the properties of the societal language (SL) on the acquisition of the HL) was assessed by performing bilingual vs. monolingual, and between-bilingual group comparisons (Russian-Dutch vs. Russian-Hebrew bilinguals). Russian, Hebrew, and Dutch show differences in the marking of the accusative (ACC) and genitive (GEN) cases, and these differences were used as a basis for the evaluation of cross-linguistic influences. Second, the study evaluated the contribution of language-external factors such as chronological age, age of onset of bilingualism (AoO), languages spoken by the parent to the child (only HL, only SL, both HL and SL), and family language type (both parents are HL speakers, mixed families). Finally, we assessed how language-external factors might potentially mitigate the effects of cross-linguistic influences in bilinguals. Russian-Dutch bilinguals from the Netherlands (n = 39, M AGE = 5.1, SD = 0.8), Russian-Hebrew bilinguals from Israel (n = 36, M AGE = 4.9, SD = 0.9) and monolingual Russian-speaking children (n = 41, M AGE = 4.8, SD = 0.8), along with adult controls residing in the Russian Federation, participated in the study. The case production of ACC and GEN cases was evaluated using elicitation tasks. For the bilinguals, the background data on individual language-external factors were elicited from the participants. The results show that case morphology is challenging under HL acquisition-case acquisition in the HL is impeded under the influence of the properties of the SL. This is evident in the lower performance of both bilingual groups, compared with the monolingual controls who showed ceiling performance in the production of target inflection in the ACC and GEN contexts. More specifically, the acquisition of morphology is hindered when there are differences in the mapping of functional features (such as with Russian-Hebrew bilinguals) and/or the absence of this feature marking (such as with Russian-Dutch bilinguals). But the findings also point to the involvement of language-external factors as important mitigators of potential negative effects of cross-linguistic influence. In summary, HL development is an intricate interplay between cross-linguistic influence and language-external factors.

Prerequisites of Third-Person Pronoun Use in Monolingual and Bilingual Children With Autism and Typical Language Development.

The current study investigated the production of third-person subject and object pronouns in monolingual and bilingual children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and typical language development (TLD). Furthermore, it evaluated the underlying linguistic and non-linguistic prerequisites of pronoun use, by assessing the role of morpho-syntactic skills, Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, working memory and inhibition on pronoun use. A total of 85 children aged 4 to 9 years participated in four groups: 27 children with HFA [14 monolingual (monoHFA) and 13 bilingual (biHFA)], and 58 children with TLD [28 monolingual (monoTLD) and 30 bilingual (biTLD)]. All children spoke Hebrew and the bilingual children spoke Russian as their Heritage Language. Third-person subject and object pronouns were elicited in Hebrew. The results yielded no effect of bilingualism, and a robust effect of HFA on the use of pronouns. Bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children paired up with their monolingual Hebrew-speaking peers in pronominal use in Hebrew. Monolingual and bilingual children with TLD showed nearly ceiling performance on pronoun use. The facilitative effect of pronominal acquisition in Hebrew among bilingual children was attributed to similarities in the pronominal systems of the two languages of bilingual children. Age was found to be a predictive factor of pronoun use in children with TLD. Conversely, children with HFA had a lower rate of pronoun production compared to the TLD groups. Both third-person subject and object pronouns were largely predicted by morpho-syntactic abilities of children with HFA. In addition, subject pronoun use was predicted by ToM skills and working memory confirming that pronoun use is a complex phenomenon, which requires integration of multiple linguistic and non-linguistic components. To conclude, our findings suggest that morpho-syntactic development is a prerequisite for third-person subject and object pronoun use in children with HFA, and ToM and working memory are involved in third-person subject pronoun use. In addition, we show that pronoun use is not compromised by dual language exposure in children with TLD and with HFA.

Morpho-Syntactic Abilities of Unbalanced Bilingual Children: A Closer Look at the Weaker Language.

Previous studies evaluating morpho-syntactic abilities in the Weaker Language of unbalanced bilingual children are scarce; and they bring inconclusive evidence on the nature of the Weaker Language development. The current study looked into morpho-syntactic profiles of bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children in the Weaker Language [the Weaker Heritage Language (HL-Russian) and the Weaker Societal Language (SL-Hebrew)] as compared to balanced bilinguals, unbalanced bilinguals in the Dominant Language and bilinguals with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Four groups of bilingual children aged 5;5-6;5 participated: unbalanced bilinguals with the Weaker HL-Russian and the Dominant SL-Hebrew (HL-weak: n = 39), unbalanced bilinguals with the Weaker SL-Hebrew and the Dominant HL-Russian (SL-weak: n = 19); balanced bilinguals (BB: n = 38), and bilinguals with SLI (biSLI: n = 23). Children's morpho-syntactic abilities in both languages were investigated using LITMUS (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings) Sentence Repetition Tasks (based on Marinis and Armon-Lotem, 2015). Quantitative analysis of morpho-syntactic abilities showed that unbalanced bilinguals scored lower in the Weaker Language as compared to balanced bilinguals and unbalanced bilinguals in the Dominant Language, yet, higher than bilinguals with SLI. Error patterns were similar across bilingual groups with TLD and could be traced to cross-linguistic influence. By contrast, error profiles of unbalanced bilinguals in the Weaker Language and bilinguals with SLI bore fundamental differences. Whereas unbalanced bilinguals in the Weaker Language opted for complex structures, relying on the available resources from the Dominant Language; bilinguals with SLI simplified complex syntactic structures. To conclude, the study shows that the Weaker Language of unbalanced bilinguals with TLD develop qualitatively similarly to the languages of balanced bilinguals and the Dominant Language in unbalanced bilinguals, albeit delayed or influenced by the Dominant Language to a larger extent. Conversely, the study brings evidence that linguistic profiles of unbalanced bilinguals with TLD in the Weaker Language and bilinguals with SLI differ, pointing at a deviant pattern of acquisition in children with SLI.

Independent and Combined Effects of Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Bilingualism on Children's Vocabulary and Verbal Short-Term Memory.

The current study explores the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism on the linguistic skills and verbal short-term memory of preschool children. In previous studies comparing children of low and mid-high SES, the terms "a child with low-SES" and "a child speaking a minority language" are often interchangeable, not enabling differentiated evaluation of these two variables. The present study controls for this confluence by testing children born and residing in the same country and attending the same kindergartens, with all bilingual children speaking the same heritage language (HL-Russian). A total of 120 children (88 bilingual children: 44 with low SES; and 32 monolingual children: 16 with low SES) with typical language development, aged 5; 7-6; 7, were tested in the societal language (SL-Hebrew) on expressive vocabulary and three repetition tasks [forward digit span (FWD), nonword repetition (NWR), and sentence repetition (SRep)], which tap into verbal short-term memory. The results indicated that SES and bilingualism impact different child abilities. Bilingualism is associated with decreased vocabulary size and lower performance on verbal short-term memory tasks with higher linguistic load in the SL-Hebrew. The negative effect of bilingualism on verbal short-term memory disappears once vocabulary is accounted for. SES influences not only linguistic performance, but also verbal short-term memory with lowest linguistic load. The negative effect of SES cannot be solely attributed to lower vocabulary scores, suggesting that an unprivileged background has a negative impact on children's cognitive development beyond a linguistic disadvantage. The results have important clinical implications and call for more research exploring the varied impact of language and life experience on children's linguistic and cognitive skills.