Screening for Developmental Language Disorder in Bilingual Children Using an Iconic Gesture Comprehension Task

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Standardized language tests may misdiagnose bilingual children due to varied language exposure.
• Iconic gestures are strongly linked to language abilities, offering a potential non-verbal assessment avenue.
• Developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children (biDLD) requires specialized, accessible screening tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the potential and validity of an iconic gesture comprehension task as a screening tool for biDLD.
• To assess if gesture comprehension can differentiate between typically developing bilingual children and those with biDLD.
• To investigate the relationship between gesture performance and language abilities in bilingual children.

Main Methods:

• Developed an iconic gesture comprehension task involving image selection after observing a gesture.
• Administered the task to 70 monolingual typically developing (moTD), 70 bilingual typically developing (biTD), and 40 biDLD children aged 3-9.
• Conducted language assessments to correlate gesture performance with language skills.

Main Results:

• Gesture comprehension performance improved with age and was significantly lower in biDLD compared to moTD and biTD groups.
• The task was not influenced by language experience but showed 68.18% diagnostic accuracy at the individual level.
• Gesture performance correlated with lexicosemantic abilities, indicating sensitivity to semantic deficits in biDLD.

Conclusions:

• The iconic gesture task effectively differentiates biDLD from typical development at a group level.
• Individual diagnostic accuracy is currently limited, necessitating further refinement for screening purposes.
• Future research should focus on modifying the task and clarifying the gesture-language relationship in biDLD.