Developmental language disorder: similarities and differences between 6-year-old mono- and multilingual children

Area of Science:

• Developmental linguistics
• Child psychology
• Clinical audiology

Background:

• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects language acquisition in young children.
• Early identification and intervention are crucial for managing DLD.
• Understanding language development in both monolingual and multilingual children is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the persistence of language ability in children diagnosed with DLD at age 2;6 years.
• To compare language outcomes at age 6 years between monolingual and multilingual children with DLD.
• To explore associations between DLD, multilingualism, and factors like heredity and parental education.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal study assessing 100 children initially screened positive for DLD at age 2;6 years.
• Standardized language tests administered at two time points: average age 2;9 years (T1) and 6;0 years (T2).
• Analysis of language profiles, DLD diagnosis, multilingual background, mean length of utterance (MLU), heredity, and parental education.

Main Results:

• Children with DLD, both monolingual and multilingual, scored below age norms at 6 years, except monolinguals in receptive vocabulary.
• Multilingual children with DLD performed significantly worse than monolinguals on comprehension, vocabulary, sentence recall, word finding, and story retelling.
• Early MLU and language comprehension disparities at T1 predicted later outcomes; heredity for DLD was more common in monolinguals.

Conclusions:

• Language difficulties identified before age 3 often persist to age 6.
• Multilingual children with DLD face greater challenges compared to their monolingual peers.
• Early language assessments are vital for identifying persistent DLD and informing targeted interventions.