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. 2023 Aug 3;66(8):2671-2687.
doi: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00495. Epub 2023 Jul 25.

Longitudinal Examination of Morphosyntactic Skills in Bilingual Children: Spanish and English Standardized Scores

Anny Castilla-Earls  1 , Juliana Ronderos  1 , David J Francis  2
Affiliations

Longitudinal Examination of Morphosyntactic Skills in Bilingual Children: Spanish and English Standardized Scores

Anny Castilla-Earls et al. J Speech Lang Hear Res. .

Abstract

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: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23671464.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Classification criteria. The Venn diagram depicts the classification categorization. White numbers represent children classified as children with developmental language disorder. Blue numbers represent children classified as typically developing.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Predicted growth in BESA/ME standard scores by language over time. BESA-ME = Bilingual English–Spanish Assessment–Middle Extension; BESA/ME = BESA and BESA-ME; TD = typically developing children; DLD = children with developmental language disorder.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Individual predicted growth curves of BESA/ME standard scores by language over time. BESA-ME = Bilingual English–Spanish Assessment–Middle Extension; BESA/ME = BESA and BESA-ME; TD = typically developing children; DLD = children with developmental language disorder.
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