Substitution Errors and the Role of Markedness in Bilingual Phonological Acquisition.
Sabrina R Sieg, Leah Fabiano, Jessica Barlow
PMID 38052067WHAT IT FOUND
Bilingual Spanish-English preschoolers, regardless of speech impairment status, substituted easier, shared sounds for difficult, language-specific ones.
However, error counts only distinguished impaired children in English, not Spanish, meaning assessment in both languages is required to avoid missing deficits.
Key findings
01Both typically developing and impaired bilingual children preferred using unmarked, shared sounds as substitutes for marked, language-specific targets.
02Children with speech sound impairments made significantly more substitution errors in English than typically developing peers, but there was no significant difference in the number of errors in Spanish.
03Substitution patterns showed evidence of between-language interaction, with English-specific phonemes appearing as substitutes for Spanish targets and vice versa.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The group of children with speech sound impairments was very small (n=7), limiting the power to detect differences in Spanish. The children with speech sound impairments were significantly younger on average than the typically developing group, which may have influenced error counts. The strict criteria for classifying speech sound impairments likely excluded children with mild deficits, meaning the findings apply to moderate-to-severe cases. Language exposure and use were estimated via parent report rather than direct observation, which can be imprecise.
Declared interests
The study was supported by an NIH grant (Extramural). No specific financial conflicts of interest with commercial entities are declared in the text, and the research team included community members serving as cultural brokers to ensure ethical engagement with the Latinx participants.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a bilingual child's low error count in their second language (Spanish in this study) indicates typical speech development. The study found that children with diagnosed speech sound impairments made just as many errors in Spanish as their typically developing peers, meaning Spanish error counts alone did not distinguish the groups.