Delay, Deviance, or Both: Evidence From Nwr Tasks in Bilingual Children With Dld

Nonword repetition tasks (NWR) have been shown to be reliable screening tools for diagnosing Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) among monolingual and bilingual children (see Armon-Lotem & Meir, 2016; Chiat, 2015; Conti-Ramsden, Botting & Faragher, 2001). There is a large body of literature comparing monolingual children with DLD to younger children with typical language development (TLD). Some studies show that monolinguals with DLD do not differ from younger controls (e.g., Rispens & Baker, 2012). Conversely, some studies demonstrate that children with DLD show lower accuracy on NWR tasks compared to younger language-matched children with TLD (e.g., Marshall, Harris, & van der Lely, 2003; Kapalková, Polišenská, & Vicenová, 2013; Topbas, Kaçar-Kütükçü, & Kopkalli-Yavuz, 2014).The current study compares bilingual children with DLD to younger bilinguals with typical language development (TLD). Moreover, bilingualism offers a unique opportunity to match children not only on language skills but also for chronological age by comparing bilingual children with DLD to age-matched unbalanced bilinguals in their weaker language. Four groups of bilinguals participated: Russian-Hebrew bilinguals with DLD (biDLD; n=23), Hebrew-dominant bilinguals with weak Russian (RUS-weak: n=39), Russian-dominant bilinguals with weak Hebrew (HEB-weak: n=19) and younger bilinguals (YOUNG, n=15). By definition, the YOUNG group was significantly younger (Mage = 47 months, SD = 4) than the other three bilingual groups (biDLD, HEB-WEAK, RU-weak) who were matched for age (Mage = 72 months, SD = 4). The results show that in both languages, the biDLD group scored significantly lower than age-matched unbalanced bilinguals. Yet, in both languages the biDLD group obtained similar scores to the YOUNG group, who are 2 years younger. This study contributes to the ongoing delay-versus-deviant debate regarding language development in children with DLD by suggesting that the initial delay becomes, in the long run, a persistent deviance.