Profiling Bilingual Children: Using Monolingual Assessment to Inform Diagnosis

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Diagnostic tools for monolinguals are often applied to bilinguals, leading to inconsistent assessments.
• Lack of evaluation criteria for using monolingual norms in bilinguals impacts research and clinical practice.
• This study addresses the challenge of identifying atypical language development (ALD) in heritage language speakers using monolingual tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of monolingual diagnostic tools for assessing bilingual children's heritage language.
• To identify reliable measures for detecting ALD in bilingual children when heritage language norms are absent.
• To inform evidence-based assessment procedures for speech-language pathologists working with bilingual populations.

Main Methods:

• Assessed 131 English-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;6-5;11 using diagnostic tools.
• Compared 15 children suspected of ALD with 116 typically developing bilingual peers.
• Analyzed the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool-Second Edition (CELF-P2) scores in English, the heritage language.

Main Results:

• A composite score for monolingual diagnosis is unreliable for bilingual children.
• Subtests like Concepts and Following Directions, Word Classes, and Sentence Repetition showed promise for identifying ALD.
• Age of onset of bilingualism is a crucial factor in analyzing linguistic outcomes.

Conclusions:

• Monolingual assessments for heritage speakers require bilingual development models for accurate diagnosis.
• Language-specific knowledge and nonlinguistic skills influence measurement sensitivity.
• Further research is recommended to validate bilingual standards for ALD identification with acceptable specificity and sensitivity.