Disentangling bilingualism and developmental language disorder in the acquisition of Spanish articles and clitics: Quantitative and qualitative contributions.
Patrick D Thane, Anny Patricia Castilla-Earls, Alejandra Auza Benavides and 1 others
PMID 41243551WHAT IT FOUND
When assessing Spanish-speaking children, look at clitics rather than articles.
Children with developmental language disorder omitted clitics far more often than typically developing peers, regardless of whether they were bilingual or monolingual.
Key findings
01Children with developmental language disorder omitted clitics significantly more often than typically developing children, and this difference held true for both bilingual and monolingual groups.
02Article errors did not reliably distinguish between typical and atypical development, as there was no significant difference in article substitution rates between children with developmental language disorder and their typically developing peers.
03Bilingual children with typical development produced target-like articles at rates similar to monolingual children with developmental language disorder, meaning article scores alone can lead to overdiagnosis in bilinguals.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study relied on elicited production tasks, which may not capture the variability seen in spontaneous speech. Items with low reliability were excluded, resulting in fewer opportunities for children to produce feminine articles compared to masculine ones. The analysis was conducted at the group level, potentially masking individual variation in language exposure and proficiency.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a bilingual child's poor article production indicates developmental language disorder. The study found that typically developing bilinguals produced articles at rates similar to monolinguals with disorder, so article scores alone can lead to false positives.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →