Can bilingualism be a benefit for children with SLI?

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Can bilingualism be a benefit for children with
SLI?

• Sharon Armon-Lotem
• The Bilingual SLI Project
• Bar-Ilan University, Israel

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Acknowledgement

• This research was supported in part by THE
  ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant No.938) and by
  the BMBF funded Consortium Migration and
  societal Integration.

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This work has been done in collaboration with

• Carmit Altman, Jonathan Fine, Elinor
  Saiegh-Haddad and Joel Walters (Bar-Ilan
  University), and Galit Adam (Tel-Aviv University)
• Hebrew Team
• Anat Blass, Efrat Harel, Michal Giladi, Ruti
  Litt, Lyle Lustigman, Sharon Porat
• English Team
• Audry Levant, Efrat Shimon, Dori Braude
• Russian Team
• Lusina Danelyants, Galina Gordishevsky, Olga
  Gupol, Nadya Kogan, Rina Raichlin

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Definitions

• Specific/Primary Language Impairment (SLI/PLI)
• Children with normal performance IQ, who score
  12 months/1 SD below chronological age on
  standardized language tests, and have no hearing
  disabilities, emotional or behavior problems,
  observed neurological deficit, or severe
  articulation/phonological deficit.
• Bilingual children A functional definition
• Children with bilingual background who are able
  to function in both languages (carry out a
  conversation and understand). This includes both
  simultaneous bilinguals and sequential
  bilinguals.
• Bilingual SLI (BISLI)
• Bilingual children who are below chronological
  age in both languages .

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Introduction- Children in Multilingual Society

• Dramatic increases in numbers of children being
  raised bilingually in multilingual communities
  due to European migrations.
• 20 of children entering Hebrew speaking secular
  schools in Israel in 2004 speak a language other
  than Hebrew at home (Central Bureau of
  Statistics, 2006).
• Threefold increase in bilingual children since
  2000 in Ireland, Italy and Spain and 50 increase
  since 2005 in UK (ec.europa.eu/education)
• Limited screening and diagnostic instruments to
  distinguish language-impaired migrant children
  from those who will eventually catch up with
  their monolingual peers.
• As a result frequent misdiagnosis

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Misdiagnosis - The scope of the problem

• Israel (Iluz-Cohen 2009) only 5 of 14 bilingual
  children in language preschools were impaired in
  both languages
• The Netherlands (de Jong 2009) Non-native
  speakers in Dutch schools
• Mainstream schools 14
• Special schools 19
• Schools for language-impaired children 24
• Germany (Berlin) - multilingual children are
  underrepresented in special schools for children
  with SLI (Moser 2007)

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Central Issues (Paradis 2010)

• Are bilingualism and SLI two of a kind? (Crago
  Paradis, 2003)
• Do bilingual children with SLI show a "double
  delay? (Paradis 2007 Paradis et al. 2003
  Paradis et al. 2005/6).
• Can bilingualism be a benefit for children with
  SLI?

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Two of a Kind ?

• Some parallels are found between the language of
  sequential bilingual children and the language of
  children with SLI e.g., both use bare verbs
  (He go).
• Paradis Crago 2000 - while children with SLI
  tend to omit the auxiliary in past or future
  periphrastic verb constructions, L2 children
  substitute the auxiliary with the base or present
  tense form.
• Paradis (2008) - only L2 children generalize the
  use of BE, in order to fill a gap between their
  communicative demands and their knowledge of the
  L2 with a morphosyntactic expression.
• Both the high proportions of substitution errors
  and the overgeneralization of BE single out L2
  children with TLD from children with SLI.

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SLI in Hebrew monolinguals Dromi et al. (1993,
1999)

• Predictions With verbal morphology so central in
  Hebrew, a Semitic language, it was predicted that
• a very few inflections, if any, would pose a
  problem for children with SLI.
• inflections which carry more features would be
  more difficult than those which carry fewer
  features with errors that show a simpler feature
  complex.
• Method Hebrew speaking children with SLI, ages
  4-6, using a sentence completion task and
  enactments.

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Findings

• Sentence completion while monolingual children
  with TLD scored at ceiling, children with SLI
  showed 80 success when one feature was involved,
  but hardly ever produce the target morpheme which
  represented two features (fem. pl.).
• Enactment while monolingual children with TLD
  scored at ceiling, children with SLI showed 80
  success when one feature was involved, but only
  60 success when two features (person and gender)
  were involved.
• While in English most errors are omissions, in
  Hebrew most errors are substitutions in which a
  morpheme which marks just one feature was used to
  replace a morpheme which marks two features

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Study I Inflections Use in L2 Hebrew by
Bilinguals with TLD
Age LoE Hebrew evaluation L2 evaluation
Russian-Hebrew 15 5-7 2lt Within norms (Goralnik 1995) No history of language impairment in Russian. Z-score higher than -1 (based on 80 Russian-Hebrew bilinguals in regular preschools) on NWR, sentence imitation, and MLU in narrative in Russian
English-Hebrew (Shimon 2008) 11 5-7 2lt Within norms Goralnik 1995) Within norms (CELF2 preschool)
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Sentence completion TLD vs. MOSLI


MOSLI (Dromi et al. , 1999)
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Major Findings

• Speakers of Hebrew as L2 whose L1 is English, are
  almost at ceiling for all three morphemes after
  two years of exposure to Hebrew
• Speakers of Hebrew whose L1 is Russian with a
  similar length of exposure are at ceiling for two
  of the three morphemes, but score like
  monolingual children with SLI on the plural
  morpheme.
• The few errors documented in the Hebrew L2 data
  were erroneous choice of tense which did not
  involve a fewer number of features, or, for the
  children with L1 Russian use of the more complex
  agreement morpheme (fem. pl.) due to code
  interference from L1 Russian.
• These data confirm that SLI and L2 are not "two
  of a kind".

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Double Delay ?

• Rational
• Due to limited processing capacity (LPC) children
  with SLI would need more exposure to fully
  acquire linguistic paradigms.
• Bilingual children with SLI have less frequent
  exposure to each language by being bilingual, and
  have functionally less exposure being SLI.
• Thus, a "double delay" is expected among
  bilingual children with SLI
• Bilingual children with SLI are as accurate as
  monolingual children with SLI in their use of ten
  different grammatical morphemes in their
  spontaneous speech (Paradis 2007 Paradis et al.
  2003 Paradis et al. 2005/6).

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Study II Language use in Narrative (Moldinov
2010)Russian-Hebrew Bilinguals with SLI
Hebrew Monolinguals with SLI
Age LoE Hebrew score L2 evaluation
BiTLD 20 50-62 2lt Within norms(Goralnik 1995) No history of language impairment in Russian. Z-score higher than -1 (based on 80 Russian-Hebrew bilinguals in regular preschools) on NWR, sentence imitation, and MLU in narrative in Russian
BiSLI 9 63-610 2lt lt -1.5 SD parents reported delay in L1 Russian. All were receiving treatment by an SLP
MoSLI 14 51-65 lt -1.5 SD

• Task telling a story from a set of pictures

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MoSLI BiSLI BiTLD
Mean of clauses 13.93 12.22 15.8
Mean of words 44.96 40.22 57.15
MLC 3.23 3.29 3.29

Syntactic complexity 0.012 0.006 0.08
Cohesion 5.9 6.8 8.2
Syntactic complexity of complex clauses/ of
clauses Cohesion of coordinators/ of clauses
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Findings

• No significant difference between MoSLI and BiSLI
  on a range of linguistic measures
• Significant difference between BiTLD and the two
  SLI groups
• Impaired bilinguals achieve a similar level of
  performance to impaired monolinguals, thus
  showing no double delay effects for the impaired
  children.

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Study III Hebrew Inflections in BISLI

• 9 bilingual English-Hebrew children, ages 5-7,
  who attend language preschool following an
  earlier diagnosis for SLI.
• The bilingual children were all sequential
  bilinguals and were exposed to Hebrew for at
  least two years.
• All scored lower than -1 SD below norm on the
  CELF2 preschool for English and lower than -1.5
  SD below norm on the Goralnik for Hebrew.
• Monolingual SLI (MoSLI) from Dromi et al (1999)

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EnactmentBISLI and MOSLI
BISLI
MOSLI
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Major Findings

• On the three inflectional categories which were
  tested in both studies, no significant difference
  was found between the two groups, neither in the
  degree of success, nor in the type of errors
  (choosing the 3rd person form which has no suffix
  instead of a form inflected with a suffix for 1st
  or 2nd person).
• Impaired bilinguals achieve a similar level of
  performance to impaired monolinguals, thus
  showing no double delay effects for the impaired
  children.

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Sentence completionBISLI and MOSLI
?
MOSLI
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Major Findings

• Bilingual children with SLI are not only as
  accurate as monolingual children with SLI, and
  sometimes even do better
• In the present tense, bilingual children with SLI
  do better than Dromi et al.'s monolingual
  children with SLI
• This is noteworthy in the use of the rare and
  marked feminine plural.
• Can bilingualism be beneficial for children with
  SLI?

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Can Bilingualism be a Benefit?

• Does bilingualism offer compensatory mechanisms
  for children with SLI, either by counteracting
  the effects of limitations in processing
  abilities or of impaired linguistic system?
• Bialystok (2007) - bilingual children have
  certain superior executive functions which are
  manifested by enhanced metalinguistic awareness.
• Roeper (2009) - bilingualism can be instructive,
  due to the organization of the dual linguistic
  system.
• Can bilingual children with SLI rely on their
  knowledge of L1 in acquiring the L2, in a way
  which gives them an advantage over monolingual
  children with SLI?

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Two Examples of Linguistic Benefits

• Reference in Narrative
• Preposition

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Study IV - Reference in NarrativeEnglish-Hebrew
Bilinguals with SLI Hebrew Monolinguals with
SLI (Jaber 2009)
Age LoE Hebrew score (Goralnik 1995) L2 evaluation (CELF2 preschool)
BiTLD 9 5-7 2lt Within norms Within norms
BiSLI 8 5-7 2lt lt -1.5 SD lt -1 SD
MoSLI 8 5-7 lt -1.5 SD

• Task - telling a story from a set of pictures
  (Goralnik 1995)

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Sample narrative (MoSLI)

• ??? ????? ?????? ??? ???? ????? ?????
• ??"? ?? ?? ????.
• ??"? ??? ???
• ??"? ??? ?? ?????? ????
• ??"? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ??
• ??"? ???? ???? ????.
• Mom prepared food for her children and pro
  ate.pl and pro ate.pl
• Then, came a fly.
• Then, he was angry
• Then, pro put.pl a pretzel on her tail.
• Then, pro put.pl something hot in her hair
• Then, pro cleaned.pl her and thats it

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Major Findings

• English-Hebrew bilingual children with SLI
  benefit from bilingualism when making a reference
  in the narrative, both in the use of null subject
  and in the use of accusative pronouns
• The more restricted use of null subject and the
  accusative pronouns in English helps these
  children use this structure in the L2

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Study V - The use of PrepositionsRussian-Hebrew
Bilinguals with SLI, English-Hebrew Bilinguals
with SLI Hebrew Monolinguals with SLI
Age LoE Hebrew score (Goralnik 1995) L2 evaluation
English-Hebrew 8 5-7 2lt lt -1.5 SD lt -1 SD (CELF2 preschool)
Russian-Hebrew 3 6-7 2lt lt -1.5 SD parents reported delay in L1 Russian. All were receiving treatment by an SLP
MoSLI 8 56-7 lt -1.5 SD

• Task Sentence Repetition, two types of
  preposition.

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A few words on prepositions

• Prepositions are a locus of code interference in
  bilingual populations.
• Some children with SLI show omission of
  prepositions (Roeper et al., 2001)
• Hebrew - two major types of prepositions
• restricted prepositions (e.g., laugh at) - have
  mainly a grammatical function
• free prepositions (temporals and locatives, e.g.,
  on the table/in the morning) - have a semantic
  function, as well, contributing to the meaning of
  the sentence.
• English a third type
• restricted prepositions in particle verbs (turn
  on, look for) - have a semantic function,
  changing the meaning of the verb

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Prepositions and SLI Predications

• Children with SLI show difficulties with
  structures which are grammatically motivated, and
  do better with structures which are semantically
  motivated
• In Hebrew, restricted prepositions have a very
  limited semantic motivation and their omission is
  expected
• In English, a sub-group of the restricted
  prepositions (particles) changes the meaning of
  the verb and has a semantic basis
• Particles in particle verbs in English promote
  awareness of the obligatoriness of prepositions
  in phrasal verbs in both languages of a
  English-Hebrew bilingual child, and can
  facilitate the use of obligatory prepositions in
  a language which has no particles (e.g, Hebrew).
• Children with BISLI whose L1 is English have a
  better chance at realizing that restricted
  prepositions are indeed obligatory, than children
  who have no place in their language where
  restricted prepositions are semantically
  motivated (e.g., monolingual Hebrew speaking
  children with SLI, or Russian-Hebrew bilinguals
  with SLI).

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Error type per preposition type
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Discussion

• English-Hebrew bilingual children benefit from
  the bilingual situation in the use of preposition
• Russian-Hebrew bilingual children, whose L1
  Russian has no particles, do not show benefits of
  bilingualism.
• Such findings suggest that knowing one language
  could help children with SLI bootstrap the
  learning of a second one.
• Bootstrapping depends on the nature of the two
  languages.

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Conclusion

• L2 knowledge and impaired knowledge are not "two
  of a kind
• bilingualism does not lead to a "dual delay" in
  bilingual children with SLI
• Bilingualism might have a facilitative effect and
  an instructive value for children with SLI

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Thank you
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