Large-scale investigation of white matter structural differences in bilingual and monolingual children: An adolescent brain cognitive development data study.

Emerging research has provided valuable insights into the structural characteristics of the bilingual brain from studies of bilingual adults; however, there is a dearth of evidence examining brain structural alterations in childhood associated with the bilingual experience. This study examined the associations between bilingualism and white matter organization in bilingual children compared to monolingual peers leveraging the large-scale data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Then, 446 bilingual children (ages 9-10) were identified from the participants in the ABCD data and rigorously matched to a group of 446 monolingual peers. Multiple regression models for selected language and cognitive control white matter pathways were used to compare white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) values between bilinguals and monolinguals, controlling for demographic and environmental factors as covariates in the models. Results revealed significantly lower FA values in bilinguals compared to monolinguals across established dorsal and ventral language network pathways bilaterally (i.e., the superior longitudinal fasciculus and inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus) and right-hemispheric pathways in areas related to cognitive control and short-term memory (i.e., cingulum and parahippocampal cingulum). In contrast to the enhanced FA values observed in adult bilinguals relative to monolinguals, our findings of lower FA in bilingual children relative to monolinguals may suggest a protracted development of white matter pathways associated with language and cognitive control resulting from dual language learning in childhood. Further, these findings underscore the need for large-scale longitudinal investigation of white matter development in bilingual children to understand neuroplasticity associated with the bilingual experience during this period of heightened language learning.

Diagnostic Accuracy of Grammaticality and Utterance Length in Bilingual Children.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of two measures derived from spontaneous language samples, mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and percentage of grammatical utterances (PGU), in identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in Spanish-English bilingual children. We examined two approaches: best language and total language. METHOD: The participants in this study included 74 Spanish-English bilingual children with (n = 36) and without (n = 38) DLD. Language samples were elicited through a story retell and story generation task using Frog wordless picture books in English and Spanish. Stories were transcribed and coded using the Systematic Analysis of Language Samples (Miller & Iglesias, 2020) to extract MLUw and PGU in both languages. RESULTS: Logistic regression analyses suggested that a model that included PGU, MLUw, and age achieved the best diagnostic accuracy in predicting group membership. Both approaches, best language and total language, had fair diagnostic accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: In combination, PGU and MLUw seem to be useful diagnostic tools to differentiate bilingual children with and without DLD. Clinical implications and usability are discussed.

Spanish Bilingual Morphosyntactic Development in Bilingual Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: Articles, Clitics, Verbs, and the Subjunctive Mood.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the growth of previously established clinical markers of developmental language disorder (DLD) in Spanish-speaking bilingual children with and without DLD. METHOD: Forty-three bilingual children with DLD and 57 typically developing children were tested 3 times over a 2-year period. Their average age at Time 1 was 5;10 (years;months). All children completed an elicitation task examining the production of articles, clitics, verbs, and the subjunctive mood in Spanish at each time point, in addition to other behavioral testing in Spanish and English. We used growth curve analysis to examine change patterns of the morphosyntactic structures over time. RESULTS: At the onset of the study, children without DLD produced higher accuracy rates than children with DLD across all morphosyntactic structures. In addition, there was a positive effect of time on all structures. Furthermore, the interaction between time and DLD was statistically significant for clitic pronouns. CONCLUSION: In agreement with previous literature on language growth in monolingual children with DLD, bilingual children with DLD showed language growth that was parallel to that of bilingual children without DLD but with significantly lower levels of attainment. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL AND PRESENTATION VIDEO: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23810820.

Longitudinal Examination of Morphosyntactic Skills in Bilingual Children: Spanish and English Standardized Scores.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to examine changes in English and Spanish morphosyntactic standardized scores over time in bilingual children. METHOD: One hundred bilingual children participated in this longitudinal study. The average age of the children at the beginning of the study was 5;11 (years;months). A subset of the participants was identified as children with developmental language disorder (DLD, n = 43). Children completed behavioral testing in Spanish and English at three time points over a period of 2 years. Growth curve modeling was employed to analyze longitudinal data. RESULTS: Distinct patterns of Spanish and English language growth were observed. While the average standard score in English increased, the average score in Spanish decreased over time for both groups. Children with DLD showed persistent language difficulties in both Spanish and English over time in comparison to their peers. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study provide evidence of a shift in language proficiency from Spanish to English for bilingual children with and without language disorders. This study also shows that bilingual children with DLD show a protracted but parallel growth in morphosyntactic skills in comparison to children without DLD. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23671464.

Can Bilingual Children Self-Report Their Bilingual Experience and Proficiency? The Houston Questionnaire.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to develop a child self-report questionnaire measuring bilingual experience and self-perceptions of Spanish and English proficiency and establish preliminary evidence of validity and reliability for the questionnaire. METHOD: Participants included 113 Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorders ranging in age from 4 to 8 years. All children completed the questionnaire in Spanish and participated in behavioral assessment of their language skills in both Spanish and English. RESULTS: Using confirmatory factor analysis, a model with three correlated factors (self-perception of proficiency in Spanish, self-perception of proficiency in English, and bilingual experience) emerged with the best global fit, reasonableness, consistency with theory, and model parsimony, suggesting that the questionnaire has good internal reliability. The scaled results of the questionnaires significantly correlated with behavioral measures of both Spanish and English, supporting the convergent validity of the measure. CONCLUSIONS: The Houston Questionnaire is an assessment tool for the assessment of bilingual experience and self-perception of proficiency in Spanish and English bilingual children between the ages of 4 and 8 years. The results provide foundational evidence supporting the reliability and convergent validity of this tool. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21158887.

Parental Beliefs, Language Practices and Language Outcomes in Spanish-English Bilingual Children.

As the U.S. population who speaks a language other than English at home continues to grow, few studies have focused on the effect of parental beliefs on the importance of bilingualism have on language outcomes of their children. In this study, we surveyed families raising Spanish-English bilingual children on their beliefs concerning both languages, language practices they implement at home, at school, and in the community, and language outcomes of their children. Using a single mediator model, this study aimed to understand the impact of parental beliefs on language outcomes in Spanish and English and the mediating effects of language practices. We then examined the individual mediating effects of language practices at home, school, and community on the relationship between parental beliefs and language outcomes for each language using a multiple mediator model. Our results suggest that parental beliefs in Spanish predict Spanish language outcomes and parental beliefs in English predict English outcomes and that practices in each language mediated this effect. In particular, we found that Spanish practices at home mediated the effect of language outcomes in Spanish and that English practices at home and in the community mediated English language outcomes.

Is Bilingual Receptive Vocabulary Assessment via Telepractice Comparable to Face-to-Face?

PURPOSE: This study investigated the effect of delivery method (face-to-face or telepractice), time, home language, and language ability on bilingual children's receptive vocabulary scores in Spanish and English. METHOD: Participants included bilingual children with (n = 32) and without (n = 57) developmental language disorders (DLD) that were assessed at 2 time points about 1 year apart. All children participated in face-to-face assessment at Time 1. At Time 2, 41 children were assessed face-to-face and 48 children were assessed using telepractice. RESULTS: Delivery method was not a significant predictor of receptive scores in either Spanish or English. Spanish and English receptive vocabulary increased over time in both children with and without DLD. Children with DLD had lower receptive vocabulary raw scores than children with typical development. Children who spoke English-only at home had significantly higher English receptive scores than children who spoke Spanish-only or both Spanish and English at home. CONCLUSIONS: Face-to-face and telepractice assessments seem to be comparable methods for the assessments of Spanish and English receptive skills. Spanish and English receptive skills increased over time in children with and without DLD. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17912297.

Cortical Thickness in bilingual and monolingual children: Relationships to language use and language skill.

There is a growing body of evidence based on adult neuroimaging that suggests that the brain adapts to bilingual experiences to support language proficiency. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is a useful source of data for evaluating this claim during childhood, as it involves data from a large sample of American children. Using the baseline ABCD Study data collected at ages nine and ten, the goal of this study was to identify differences in cortical thickness between bilinguals and monolinguals and to evaluate how variability in English vocabulary and English use within bilinguals might explain these group differences. We identified bilingual participants as children who spoke a non-English language and were exposed to the non-English language at home. We then identified a matched sample of English monolingual participants based on age, sex, pubertal status, parent education, household income, non-verbal IQ, and handedness. Bilinguals had thinner cortex than monolinguals in widespread cortical regions. Within bilinguals, more English use was associated with greater frontal and parietal cortical thickness; greater English vocabulary was associated with greater frontal and temporal cortical thickness. These findings replicate and extend previous research with bilingual children and highlight unexplained cortical thickness differences between bilinguals and monolinguals.

Neuroemergentism: A Framework for Studying Cognition and the Brain.

There has been virtual explosion of studies published in cognitive neuroscience primarily due to increased accessibility to neuroimaging methods, which has led to different approaches in interpretation. This review seeks to synthesize both developmental approaches and more recent views that consider neuroimaging. The ways in which Neuronal Recycling, Neural Reuse, and Language as Shaped by the Brain perspectives seek to clarify the brain bases of cognition will be addressed. Neuroconstructivism as an additional explanatory framework which seeks to bind brain and cognition to development will also be presented. Despite sharing similar goals, the four approaches to understanding how the brain is related to cognition have generally been considered separately. However, we propose that all four perspectives argue for a form of Emergentism in which combinations of smaller elements can lead to a greater whole. This discussion seeks to provide a synthesis of these approaches that leads to the emergence of a theory itself. We term this new synthesis Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuromergentism for short).

Symbiosis, Parasitism and Bilingual Cognitive Control: A Neuroemergentist Perspective.

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods has resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed.