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Bilingualism Does Not Hinder Grammatical Development in Down Syndrome: Evidence from a Sentence Repetition Task.
Alexandra Perovic1, Katie Levy2, Inès Aertsen3
1Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|June 26, 2025
Summary
Bilingual children with Down syndrome show similar grammatical challenges to monolinguals, but may benefit from morphologically rich home languages, suggesting dual-language input is beneficial.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Special Education
Background:
- Research on bilingualism and language development in children with learning disabilities is limited.
- Assessing language in bilingual children with disabilities is challenging due to heterogeneity and lack of tools.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate grammatical abilities in bilingual versus monolingual children with Down syndrome.
- To explore the influence of bilingualism on grammatical development in this population.
Main Methods:
- Pilot study using the LITMUS Sentence Repetition Task.
- Recruited ten children with Down syndrome (five bilingual, five monolingual), aged 5-8.
- Compared grammatical abilities, focusing on omissions and complex structures.
Main Results:
- Both groups produced many ungrammatical repetitions, omitting verbs more than nouns and function words more than content words.
- Bilingual children speaking morphologically rich languages showed fewer difficulties with some function words and complex structures.
- Sentence repetition task showed limited use for assessing expressive grammar in this group.
Conclusions:
- Bilingualism does not hinder grammatical development in children with Down syndrome.
- Dual-language input is not discouraged; morphologically rich home languages may offer specific grammatical support.
- Further research is needed on bilingualism's benefits for grammatical morphemes and complex syntax.
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