"Did I Say Cherry?" Error Patterns on a Blocked Cyclic Naming Task for Bilingual Children With and Without...

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Bilingual children's language development presents unique challenges.
• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects language acquisition and processing.
• Understanding lexical retrieval in bilingual children with DLD is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare language accuracy and error patterns in Spanish-English bilingual children with and without DLD.
• To investigate the influence of semantic context and language on picture naming.
• To identify specific error types associated with DLD in bilinguals.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a blocked cyclic picture-naming task with Spanish-English bilingual children.
• Manipulated semantic similarity of pictured stimuli across 'Same' and 'Mixed' category contexts.
• Scored children's productions offline for accuracy, error frequency, and error type.

Main Results:

• Children with DLD made more errors than typically developing peers, particularly in Spanish.
• Picture naming was more accurate in English than Spanish and in mixed than same semantic contexts.
• Children with less English exposure produced more nonresponses in English.

Conclusions:

• Bilingual children, especially those with DLD, face lexical retrieval difficulties in semantically related contexts.
• Increased error rates in bilingual children with DLD stem from inherent language impairments, not solely limited language exposure.
• Impoverished semantic networks in DLD may lead to insufficient lexical selection constraints and higher error production.