Sandrine Ferré

A Nonword Repetition Task to Assess Bilingual Children’s Phonology

ABSTRACT Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are particularly sensitive to phonological complexity in their language. Their performance drops when there are specific phonological structures or when complexity increases. A nonword repetition (NWR) test, which aims to assess the phonology of bilingual speakers with and without SLI, should include phonological properties that are independent of the language and phonological properties whose complexity is quantifiable. The methodology and constraints related to the creation of a NWR test named LITMUS-NWR-FRENCH, which combines these two objectives, are presented. This task was tested on a population of 67 children, 5½ to 8½ years old, bilingual and monolingual, with and without SLI, having in common French as L1 or L2. Results show that the LITMUS-NWR-FRENCH task differentiates between children with and without SLI in the context of bilingualism. It also shows the influence and importance of phonological complexity in children with SLI.

Identifying language impairment in bilingual children in France and in Germany: Language impairment in bilingual children

BACKGROUND The detection of specific language impairment (SLI) in children growing up bilingually presents particular challenges for clinicians. Non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks have proven to be the most accurate diagnostic tools for monolingual populations, raising the question of the extent of their usefulness in different bilingual populations. AIMS To determine the diagnostic accuracy of NWR and SR tasks that incorporate phonological/syntactic complexity as discussed in recent linguistic theory. The tasks were developed as part of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) toolkit, in two different national settings, France and Germany, and investigated children with three different home languages: Arabic, Portuguese and Turkish. METHODS & PROCEDURES NWR and SR tasks developed in parallel were administered to 151 bilingual children, aged 5;6-8;11, in France and in Germany, to 64 children in speech-language therapy (SLT) and to 87 children not in SLT, whose first language (L1) was Arabic, Portuguese or Turkish. Children were also administered standardized language tests in each of their languages to determine likely clinical status (typical development (TD) or SLI), and parents responded to a questionnaire including questions about early and current language use (bilingualism factors) and early language development (risk factors for SLI). Monolingual controls included 47 TD children and 29 children with SLI. Results were subjected to inter-group comparisons, to diagnostic accuracy calculation, and to correlation and multiple regression analyses. OUTCOMES & RESULTS In accordance with previous studies, NWR and SR identified SLI in the monolingual children, yielding good to excellent diagnostic accuracy. Diagnostic accuracy in bilingual children was fair to good, generally distinguishing children likely to have SLI from children likely to have TD. Accuracy was necessarily linked to the determination of clinical status, which was based on standardized assessment in each of the childs languages. Positive early development, a composite risk factor for SLI, and not variables related to language exposure and use, generally emerged as the strongest predictor of performance on the two tasks, constituting additional, independent support for the efficacy of NWR and SR in identifying impairment in bilingual children. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS NWR and SR tasks informed by linguistic theory are appropriate for use as part of the diagnostic process for identifying language impairment in bilingual children for whom the language of assessment is different from the home language, in diverse sociolinguistic contexts.

A strategic plan to identify key neurophysiological mechanisms and brain circuits in autism

Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cover a large variety of clinical profiles which share two main dimensions: social and communication impairment and repetitive behaviors or restricted interests, which are present during childhood. There is now no doubt that genetic factors are a major component in the etiology of autism but precise physiopathological pathways are still being investigated. Furthermore, developmental trajectories combined with compensatory mechanisms will lead to various clinical and neurophysiological profiles which together constitute this Autism Spectrum Disorder. To better understand the pathophysiology of autism, comprehension of key neurophysiological mechanisms and brain circuits underlying the different bioclinical profiles is thus crucial. To achieve this goal we propose a strategy which investigates different levels of information processing from sensory perception to complex cognitive processing, taking into account the complexity of the stimulus and whether it is social or non-social in nature. In order to identify different developmental trajectories and to take into account compensatory mechanisms, we further propose that such protocols should be carried out in individuals from childhood to adulthood representing a wide variety of clinical forms.