Longitudinal examination of morphosyntactic skills in bilingual children (Castilla-Earls et al., 2023)

Purpose: This study aimed to examine changes in English and Spanish morphosyntactic standardized scores over time in bilingual children.Method: One hundred bilingual children participated in this longitudinal study. The average age of the children at the beginning of the study was 5;11 (years;months). A subset of the participants was identified as children with developmental language disorder (DLD, n = 43). Children completed behavioral testing in Spanish and English at three time points over a period of 2 years. Growth curve modeling was employed to analyze longitudinal data.Results: Distinct patterns of Spanish and English language growth were observed. While the average standard score in English increased, the average score in Spanish decreased over time for both groups. Children with DLD showed persistent language difficulties in both Spanish and English over time in comparison to their peers.Conclusions: The results of this study provide evidence of a shift in language proficiency from Spanish to English for bilingual children with and without language disorders. This study also shows that bilingual children with DLD show a protracted but parallel growth in morphosyntactic skills in comparison to children without DLD.Supplemental Material S1. Correlations between BESA/ME in Spanish and English over time.Castilla-Earls, A., Ronderos, J., & Francis, D. J. (2023). Longitudinal examination of morphosyntactic skills in bilingual children: Spanish and English standardized scores. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(8), 2671–2687. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00495

研究目的：本项研究旨在探究双语儿童在英语和西班牙语中形态句法标准化分数随时间的变化。研究方法：一百名双语儿童参与了这项纵向研究。研究开始时，儿童的平均年龄为5岁11个月。其中，一部分参与者被识别为发育性语言障碍（DLD，n = 43）儿童。这些儿童在西班牙语和英语两种语言中完成了三个时间点的行为测试，测试期间跨度为2年。研究采用了增长曲线模型来分析纵向数据。研究结果：观察到西班牙语和英语的语言增长模式存在显著差异。两组儿童在英语的平均标准化分数随时间上升的同时，西班牙语的平均分数则呈现下降趋势。与同龄人相比，DLD儿童在西班牙语和英语两种语言中都表现出持续的语言困难。研究结论：本研究为双语儿童（无论是否患有语言障碍）语言能力从西班牙语转向英语的转变提供了证据。此外，研究还表明，与无DLD的儿童相比，具有DLD的双语儿童在形态句法技能上的增长更为缓慢但平行。补充材料S1：西班牙语和英语随时间变化的BESA/ME相关性。Castilla-Earls, A., Ronderos, J., & Francis, D. J. (2023). 双语儿童形态句法技能的纵向研究：西班牙语和英语标准化分数. 语音、语言和听力研究杂志，66(8)，2671–2687. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00495