Eva-Kristina Salameh

Developmental perspectives on bilingual Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND There is a need for studies on bilingual language acquisition in combination with language impairment (LI). The speech and language clinician must have tools to differentiate between problems depending on inadequate exposure to a language and problems depending on a LI. Another important issue is the pace of bilingual language acquisition relative to the severity of LI. AIMS To investigate grammatical development over 12 months in both languages in 10 Swedish-Arabic pre-school children with severe LI and 10 Swedish-Arabic pre-school children without LI. METHODS & PROCEDURES The children were matched for age, gender, exposure to Swedish dialect, and exposure to Arabic dialect. The developmental hierarchy predicted by Processability Theory was used in tests in both Swedish and Arabic. Processability Theory was used as a yardstick to measure grammatical development in both languages. OUTCOME & RESULTS Bilingual children, both with and without LI, developed grammatical structures in Swedish and Arabic in the same implicational way. Children with severe LI could develop two languages, although the pace of development was much slower in both languages. Bilingual children with severe LI were also more vulnerable to limited exposure of both their languages. CONCLUSIONS A developmental perspective is important to understand the nature of LI in bilingual children. The results also have implications for the assessment of language development in bilingual children with severe LI, since a hardly perceptible development over time is observed.

The impact of speech material on speech judgement in children with and without cleft palate

BACKGROUND The chosen method of speech assessment, including type of speech material, may affect speech judgement in children with cleft palate. AIM To assess the effect of different speech materials on speech judgement in 5-year-old children born with or without cleft palate, as well as the reliability of materials by means of intra- and inter-transcriber agreement of consonant transcriptions. METHODS & PROCEDURES Altogether 40 children were studied, 20 born with cleft palate, 20 without. The children were audio recorded at 5 years of age. Speech materials used were: single-word naming, sentence repetition (both developed for cleft palate speech assessment), retelling of a narrative and conversational speech. The samples were phonetically transcribed and inter- and intra-transcriber agreement was calculated. Percentage correct consonants (PCC), percentage correct places (PCP), percentage correct manners (PCM), and percentage active cleft speech characteristics (CSC) were assessed. In addition, an analysis of phonological simplification processes (PSP) was performed. OUTCOME & RESULTS The PCC and CSC results were significantly more accurate in word naming than in all other speech materials in the children with cleft palate, who also achieved more accurate PCP results in word naming than in sentence repetition and conversational speech. Regarding PCM and PSP, performance was significantly more accurate in word naming than in conversational speech. Children without cleft palate did better, irrespective of the speech material. The medians of intra- and inter-transcriber agreement were good in both groups and all speech materials. The closest agreement in the cleft palate group was seen in word naming and the weakest in the retelling task. CONCLUSION & IMPLICATIONS The results indicate that word naming is the most reliable speech material when the purpose is to assess the best speech performance of a child with cleft palate. If the purpose is to assess connected speech, sentence repetition is a reliable and also valid speech material, with good transcriber agreement and equally good articulation accuracy as in retelling and conversational speech. For typically developing children without a cleft palate, the chosen speech material appears not to affect speech judgement.

Noun phrase morphology in Swedish-speaking children with specific language impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are often described as having great difficulty with grammatical morphology, but most studies have focused only on these childrens use of verb morphology. In this study, we examined the use of noun phrase (NP) morphology by preschool-age children with SLI who are acquiring Swedish. Relative to typically developing same-age peers and younger peers matched according to mean length of utterance, the children with SLI had greater difficulty in the use of genitive inflections, indefinite articles, and article + adjective + noun constructions. Their difficulties were evidenced in omissions as well as substitutions. Furthermore, article omissions were more frequent in NPs containing an adjective and a noun than in NPs with only a noun. These findings indicate that in languages such as Swedish, NP morphology as well as verb morphology can be quite problematic for children with SLI. Factors that might have contributed to these childrens difficulties are the lack of transparency of the gender of Swedish nouns, the morphological complexity of NPs containing adjectives in Swedish, the weak syllable status of articles, and the consonantal nature of some of the inflections. (Less)

Language impairment in Swedish bilingual children: a comparison between bilingual and monolingual children in Malmö.

In this study two groups of children were compared, 192 bilingual and 246 monolingual, referred over a 12‐mo period to University Hospital in Malmo for suspected language impairment. Compared with monolingual children, bilingual children ran a significantly lower risk (RR = 0.76, p < 0.0001) of being referred by a child health centre, and a significantly higher risk (RR = 1.54, p < 0.0103) of being referred after 5 y of age. In the bilingual group there was also a significantly higher risk of parental refusal of assessment (RR = 2.35, p<0.0016) and of the children being diagnosed with a severe language impairment (RR=1.87, p<0.0009). The risk for bilingual children with severe language impairment being discharged owing to non‐attendance was high (RR = 6.20, p < 0.0002) compared to monolingual children. The risk increased with severity of language impairment.

Assessing phonologies in bilingual Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment

Ten Swedish-Arabic children with severe language impairment (LI) and 10 matched controls were tested with Swedish and Arabic phonology tests. The children with severe LI displayed significantly more of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic processes in both languages. The results are also discussed in relation to monolingual children in Swedish and Arabic, both children with a normal language development as well as with a language impairment. Both groups of Swedish-Arabic children tended to develop their two languages in the same way as monolingual children in each language, with some exceptions. Both groups had substantial lexical problems, especially in Arabic. Exposure to Swedish was an important variable relative to number of syntagmatic processes. The importance of assessing both languages is emphasized.

Risk factors for language impairment in Swedish bilingual and monolingual children relative to severity

Aim: To explore potential risk factors for language impairment (LI) relative to degree of severity in bilingual and monolingual children. Methods: Two groups of clinically assessed children were compared, 252 bilinguals whose parents were both non‐Swedish and 446 monolinguals, who were referred over a period of 24 mo to the University Hospital in Malmo for suspected LI. Results: A multivariate linear regression for both groups showed that two risk factors were the same: parental distress (p > 0.0001 in both groups) and short attention span (p > 0.0001 in both groups). Male gender (p > 0.0001) was an additional predictor for LI relative to degree of severity in the monolingual group. Specific risk factors for LI relative to degree of severity in the bilingual children were maternal arrival within 1 y in relation to birth (p > 0.002) and parental need for an interpreter after >5 y in Sweden (p > 0.040).

The acquisition of Swedish as second language in a group of Arabic-speaking pre-school children: word order patterns and phrasal morphology

Children with Swedish as a second language (L2) and Swedish children with specific language impairment (SLI) have displayed interesting similarities in their linguistic development. A group of 18 normally developed Arabic-speaking children, five and six years old, were tested with respect to their development of word order patterns and phrasal morphology in the noun phrase. The results were in accordance with Pienemanns processability theory, that predicts the order of acquisition of both morphological and syntactical structures. The results on word order patterns showed similarities between L2 and SLI children. Processability theory could be a powerful tool in analyzing the grammar in children with SLI.

Phonology in Swedish-speaking 5-year-olds born with unilateral cleft lip and palate and the relationship with consonant production at 3 years of age

Abstract Purpose: At ∼3 years of age ∼50% of the children born with cleft palate present with phonological/articulatory difficulties. Differences between children with and without cleft palate have been reported to decline with age; however, the phonology in children with cleft palate at pre-school age/early school age has rarely been explored. The purpose of this study was to assess phonology in children with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) at age 5 and its relationship with performances at 3 years of age. Method: The study included 29 children with UCLP and 20 without UCLP. Percentage correct consonants adjusted for age (PCC-A) and number of consistent phonological simplification processes were assessed from phonetic transcriptions. In addition, a descriptive analysis of phonological/articulatory processes was performed. Result: The children with UCLP displayed significantly lower PCC-A and more phonological processes at age 5 years than peers without UCLP. The correlations between the outcomes at 3 and 5 years of age were significant. Conclusion: Still at 5 years of age many children with cleft palate have phonological problems and it is possible to identify children at risk for impaired phonology at earlier age.

Verbal Competence in Narrative Retelling in 5-Year-Olds with Unilateral Cleft Lip and Palate.

BACKGROUND Research regarding expressive language performance in children born with cleft palate is sparse. The relationship between articulation/phonology and expressive language skills also needs to be further explored. AIMS To investigate verbal competence in narrative retelling in 5-year-old children born with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) and its possible relationship with articulation/phonology at 3 and 5 years of age. METHODS & PROCEDURES A total of 49 children, 29 with UCLP treated according to three different procedures for primary palatal surgery and a comparison group of 20 children (COMP), were included. Longitudinally recorded audio files were used for analysis. At ages 3 and 5, the children were presented with a single-word test of word naming and at age 5 also the Bus Story Test (BST). The BST was assessed according to a test manual. The single-word test was phonetically transcribed and the percentage of consonants correct adjusted for age (PCC-A) was calculated. Differences regarding the BST results within the UCLP group were analysed. The results were compared with the results of the COMP group, and also with norm values. In addition, the relationship between the results of the BST and the PCC-A scores at ages 3 and 5 years was analysed. OUTCOMES & RESULTS No significant group differences or correlations were found. However, 65.5% of the children in the UCLP group had an information score below 1 standard deviation from the norm value compared with 30% in the COMP group. CONCLUSIONS A larger proportion of children in the UCLP group than in the COMP group displayed problems with retelling but the differences between the two groups were not significant. There was no association between the BST results in the children with UCLP and previous or present articulatory/phonological competence. Since group size was small in both groups, the findings need to be verified in a larger study.

A descriptive study of lexical organisation in bilingual children with language impairment: Developmental changes

Purpose: This study aimed to describe the development of Arabic and Swedish lexical organisation in bilingual children with language impairment (BLI). Method: Lexical organisation was assessed through word associations in 10 BLI and 10 bilingual children with typical development (BTD), aged 6;2–8;0 years, matched for age and gender. The participants were assessed twice, with a 1-year interval. Word associations were coded as paradigmatic, syntagmatic, phonological, other and no answer. This study reports analyses of the semantically-related syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations. Using repeated measures ANOVA, main and interaction effects of Group, Time and Language were examined for paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations separately. Result: The interaction between Group and Time was significant for both associations. The BLI group increased syntagmatic associations from time 1 to time 2, while the BTD group increased paradigmatic associations. Results showed a significant main effect of Language for both types of associations, with better performance in Swedish. Significant Group by Language interactions resulted from lower Arabic than Swedish syntagmatic and paradigmatic scores for the BLI and BTD groups, respectively. Conclusion: Differing developmental trajectories indicate that bilingual children with LI develop lexical organisation at a slower pace than bilingual peers with typical language development.