Bilingual children and communication disorders: a 30-year research retrospective

We present a review of the empirical literature at the intersection of bilingualism and pediatric communication disorders. A computer search of six electronic databases was done to identify studies published in English since 1950 that directly investigated some aspect of speech, language, or cognitive performance in developing bilinguals and children with communication impairments. The computer search yielded 116 non-duplicated articles, the first published in 1978. An article review by the authors further reduced the number of studies meeting search criteria to 64. A majority of studies focused on primary developmental language impairment (LI) and children learning two languages sequentially. Spanish and English were the most frequent combination of languages for bilingual participants. Collective study findings are presented with respect to trends, clinical implications, and areas for future research.