What predicts individual response to language treatment in bilingual children with developmental language disorder?

The analysis included only 32 children, so the associations may be unstable. It was a retrospective secondary analysis of data collected in an earlier study, not a study designed to test these predictors. The researchers combined children from two different language treatment conditions, so it cannot be separated whether predictors or treatment condition influenced outcomes. The researchers tested many predictors and did not adjust the results for that many comparisons, so some associations could be chance. The sample consisted of children receiving school-based services, passing a hearing screening, scoring in the average range on nonverbal intelligence, and having no other reported conditions, so it may not apply to children outside that profile. Raw Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4 scores were used because bilingual children are not in the English norms and some scaled scores were at the lowest possible value, so normative comparisons are limited.

Do not read these associations as a rule for choosing treatment. The study was small, exploratory, and combined two treatment conditions without adjusting for multiple comparisons, so the predictors may not hold in other bilingual children.