Risk factors for language impairment in Swedish bilingual and monolingual children relative to severity

To explore potential risk factors for language impairment (LI) relative to degree of severity in bilingual and monolingual children.

Two groups of clinically assessed children were compared, 252 bilinguals whose parents were both non-Swedish and 446 monolinguals, who were referred over a period of 24 mo to the University Hospital in Malmö for suspected LI.

A multivariate linear regression for both groups showed that two risk factors were the same: parental distress (p < 0.0001 in both groups) and short attention span (p < 0.0001 in both groups). Male gender (p < 0.0001) was an additional predictor for LI relative to degree of severity in the monolingual group. Specific risk factors for LI relative to degree of severity in the bilingual children were maternal arrival within 1 y in relation to birth (p < 0.002) and parental need for an interpreter after > 5 y in Sweden (p < 0.040).

Most risk factors for LI relative to degree of severity in this study seemed to apply to both groups, although they sometimes appeared in another form in the bilingual group. Gender and possibly also hereditary factors seemed to need to interact with environmental factors to appear as risk factors for the bilingual children in this study.