Bilingualism & Down Syndrome Abstracts

Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology 32 (1): 6-20 (2008 Spring)

Language Learning in Four Bilingual Children with Down Syndrome: A Detailed Analysis of Vocabulary and Morphosyntax

Krista Feltmate, Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird
School of Human Communication Disorders, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Bilingualism in children with Down syndrome (DS) is an under-studied topic. Some professionals counsel families to restrict input to a single language for children with DS because there are delays present even when only one language is being learned. The purpose of the current study was to provide more information about the ability of children with DS to learn two languages. Such evidence is important for guiding clinical decisions. The morphosyntactic and vocabulary skills in English and French of four bilingual children with DS were analyzed and compared individually to that of a typically developing bilingual child and a monolingual child with DS. The children in each triad were matched on nonverbal mental age and exposure to a second language. While language delays were evidenced in both languages for the bilingual children with DS, no consistent effect of bilingualism was seen. All four bilingual children with DS were developing functional second language skills. Current input accounted for much of the variability in English versus French language skills. These fi ndings provide families and professionals with information that will assist them in making appropriate decisions for children with DS.

Am J Speech Lang Pathol 14 (3): 187-99 (2005 Aug)

The language abilities of bilingual children with Down syndrome

Bird EK, Cleave P, Trudeau N, Thordardottir E, Sutton A, Thorpe A
School of Human Communication Disorders, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have cognitive disabilities resulting from trisomy 21. Language-learning difficulties, especially expressive language problems, are an important component of the phenotype of this population. Many individuals with DS are born into bilingual environments. To date, however, there is almost no information available regarding the capacity of these individuals to acquire more than 1 language. The present study compared the language abilities of 8 children with DS being raised bilingually with those of 3 control groups matched on developmental level: monolingual children with DS (n = 14), monolingual typically developing (TD) children (n = 18), and bilingual TD children (n = 11). All children had at least 100 words in their productive vocabularies but a mean length of utterance of less than 3.5. The bilingual children spoke English and 1 other language and were either balanced bilinguals or English-dominant. English testing was completed for all children using the following: the Preschool Language Scale, Third Edition; language sampling; and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). Bilingual children were also tested in the second language using a vocabulary comprehension test, the CDI, and language sampling. Results provided evidence of a similar profile of language abilities in bilingual children as has been documented for monolingual children with DS. There was no evidence of a detrimental effect of bilingualism. That is, the bilingual children with DS scored at least as well on all English tests as their monolingual DS counterparts. Nonetheless, there was considerable diversity in the second-language abilities demonstrated by these individuals with DS. Clinical implications are addressed.

X International Congress for the Study of Child Language Berlin, July 25-29, 2005

Bilingual Children with Down Syndrome: A Longitudinal Study

Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird¹, Patricia L. Cleave¹, Natacha Trudeau², Elin Thordardottir³, Ann Sutton²
¹Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada; ²Universite de Montreal, Montreal, Canada; ³McGill University, Montreal, Canada

There is emerging evidence that children with Down syndrome can be successfully bilingual and that bilingualism does not disadvantage their language development (Kay-Raining Bird, Cleave, Trudeau, Thordardottir, Sutton, & Thorpe, in submission; Vallar & Papagno, 1993; Woll & Grove, 1996). This presentation will focus on a subset of data from an on-going study examining language development longitudinally in a group of bilingual children with Down syndrome. There were two major objectives of the larger study. The first was to compare the longitudinal progression of English language skills of bilingual children with Down syndrome (DS) to three mental-age matched groups of control children: bilingual children with typical development (TD), monolingual children with DS, and monolingual children with TD. The second objective of the larger study was to investigate longitudinally the degree to which children with DS are successful in acquiring a second language. In this study, all bilingual children are either primary English speakers, or have an equal facility in both languages. All children have had intense, consistent and on-going input in both languages, but the context in which they experience the two languages varies across children. That is, some children are being raised in a one-parent, one-language environment while others are exposed to one language at home and another outside the home (e.g., in a preschool, daycare or school). Most children are bilingual in English and French, but the second language varies across individuals.
We propose to present a preliminary analysis of the English language data for a subset of the bilingual children with Down syndrome, comparing them at each point in time to the English language skills of the three matched control groups. Data from eight individuals with Down syndrome will be presented, ranging in age from six to thirteen years at the first time of testing. In the span of four years, all eight will have been tested twice and four will have been tested three times. The testing protocol includes measures of language, cognition, reading, writing and phonological awareness. For the purposes of this presentation, the cognitive and English language measures are of interest. Two subtests of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (4th edition, Thorndike et al., 1986) were used to match groups on mental age. Measures of English language include two measures of language comprehension: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test -Revised (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981) and the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language - Revised (TACL-R). Measures of expressive English language ability were obtained from orthographically transcribed conversational and narrative language samples, collected with a parent or examiner. These include mean length of utterance (MLU), and number of different words and total words produced in 100 utterances. One-way ANOVAs will compare group performance on each experimental measure. As well, the change in English language skill over time will be presented descriptively for each of the bilingual children with DS. As far as we are aware, these are the first longitudinal data of bilingual children with Down syndrome that have been collected.

Down Syndrome Research and Practice 5 (1): 1-15 (1998)

Cases of exceptional language in mental retardation and Down syndrome: Explanatory perspectives

Jean A. Rondal, Ph.D., Dr. Ling.
From a keynote presentation to the 2nd International Conference on Language and Cognitive Development in Down syndrome, Portsmouth, UK, April 8-10, 1997.

Recent studies of exceptional language development and functioning in mentally retarded people raise questions regarding basic issues in language disorders. These studies are summarised and their implications discussed. Possible reasons for the existence of such cases are examined including language training, general cognitive functioning, working memory, cerebral dominance, and deep-seated variation at brain level.

23^rd Annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders/9^th Congress International Association for the Study of Child Language 2002

Language mixing in children with Down syndrome

Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird & Patricia Cleave¹. Jennifer Cupit². Anna Randall-Gryz & Glen Nowell¹.
¹Dalhousie University, Canada. ²MacKay Center, Canada.

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have cognitive and language deficits secondary to a genetic disorder involving trisomy of the 21^st chromosome. Language learning is particularly problematic for these children. Currently there is little research that analyzes the success that children with Down syndrome have in becoming bilingual. The primary objective of this research is to compare the code-mixing behaviors of bilingual children with Down syndrome to those of bilingual controls with typical development.
Code mixing can occur at a semantic, syntactic, phonological or pragmatic level and varies widely in frequency across individuals. It has been differentially interpreted as a reflection of language confusion, limitations in translation equivalents (i.e., children choose to use an aspect of another language to fill a gap in the language currently being used), or input characteristics (i.e., the child mixes to the extent that others model such mixing) (Nicoladis & Genesee, 1997). These authors have argued that code-mixing is probably not a sign that children have not differentiated their languages as the frequency of code-mixing does not decline with age and other evidence suggests early differentiation at early ages for all language components. The purpose of the proposed poster is to examine the degree and type of language mixing used by bilingual children with and without Down syndrome, and to compare the code-mixing behaviors of children and their mothers.
Methods
Subjects: Two groups of bilingual children, those with DS and those without, were matched for mental age using either the Bayley Mental Scale or two subtests of the Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence, 4th edition (Bead Memory, Pattern Analysis) participated. All children were primary English speakers who experience frequent and consistent exposure to a second language (usually French) and speak both languages. All children were in the early stages of language development (spoken words > 100, MLU < 3.0). We currently have data for 6 bilingual TD and 8 bilingual DS children.
Procedure: All children were seen for two sessions. The two sessions were distinguished by the language used, the order of language of session (English versus other) being counterbalanced across children. In the English session, tests of English language (PLS -III, PPVT-R) were collected and children played with an adult primary speaker of English (usually the mother) using toy sets developed to elicit talk about either a group of nouns or verbs. In the second-language session children were tested in the second language (i.e., EVIP) and children played with an adult whose primary language was the second language of the child (e.g., French), using the same noun and verb toy sets. For all children, the MacArthur Inventory of Communication Development was also completed (modified to allow signs to be reported), for each language of exposure.
Analysis: The talk of mothers and their children in each English toy-play interaction was transcribed using SALT conventions. For each speaker, intra- and inter-utterance language mixing behaviors were identified and coded for the language component(s) code-mixed (i.e., semantic, syntactic, phonological). The number of morphemes code-mixed to total morphemes produced and the relative frequency of code-mixing types (i.e., semantic etc) was computed. To examine whether input might explain the code-mixing behaviors of the children, mothers' code-mixing behaviors will be compared to that of their children. To examine whether system gaps can account for the code-switching behaviors of the children, the presence of translation equivalents in the children's talk will be analyzed. As well, to examine whether children with DS show evidence of more language confusion or receive different input with regards to code-mixing, the frequency and type of code-mixing behaviors will be compared for both mothers and children in the two groups (DS, TD).

23^rd Annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders/9^th Congress International Association for the Study of Child Language 2002

Language learning in children with Down syndrome: The impact of linguistic context

Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird & Patricia Cleave¹. Elin T. Thordardottir². Jennifer Cupit³. Glen Nowell & Anna Randall-Gryz¹.
¹Dalhousie University, Canada. ²McGill University, Canada. ³MacKay Center, Canada.

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have cognitive and language deficits secondary to a genetic disorder involving trisomy of the 21^st chromosome. Language learning is particularly problematic for thes e children. Consequently, interventionists often recommend that the language input to these children be limited to a single language. This recommendation, on the surface, may seem logical. However, several factors argue against such a recommendation. Current research has highlighted the cognitive and language benefits of multilingualism (e.g., Bruck & Genesee, 1997) for typically developing children. As well, there is almost no information available regarding the impact of multilingual contexts on the language learning success or failure of children with language learning difficulties. Finally, there are often negative consequences for children and their families that result from limiting language input to a single language in a society that is increasingly diverse.
The primary objective of this research is to compare the English language development of monolingual and bilingual children with either Down syndrome (DS) or typical language and cognitive development (TD), matched for mental age. As we are currently collecting multilingual data, this presentation will provide a preliminary look at these data.
Methods
Subjects: Four groups of children, matched for mental age using either the Bayley Mental Scale or two subtests of the Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence, 4^th edition (Bead Memory, Pattern Analysis) participated. Children with either DS or TD were either: (a) monolingual English speakers, or (b) primary English speakers with frequent and consistent exposure to a second language (usually French). All children were in the early stages of language development (spoken words > 100, MLU < 3.0). We currently have data for: 23 monolingual TD, 17 monolingual DS; 6 bilingual TD, and 8 bilingual DS.
Procedure: All children were seen for two sessions. For the monolingual children, the first session was used to administer standardized tests of language (PLS -III, PPVT-R) and cognitive abilities (Bayley-R or Stanford-Binet, 4^th edition) and to collect a language sample in play with the mother. The second session involved play with two sets of toys and the reading of two books, each context designed to elicit talk about nouns or verbs. For the bilingual children, the two sessions were distinguished by the language used, the order of language of session (English versus other) being counterbalanced across children. In the English session, tests of English language (PLS -III, PPVT-R) were collected and children played with an adult primary speaker of English (usually the mother) using the noun and verb toy sets mentioned above. In the second-language session children were tested in the second language (i.e., EVIP) and children played with an adult whose primary language was the second language of the child (e.g., French), using the same noun and verb toy sets. For all children, the MacArthur Inventory of Communication Development was also completed (modified to allow signs to be reported), for each language of exposure.
Analysis: Talk in each English toy-play interaction was transcribed using SALT conventions. MLU, number of different words and total number of words in 100 child utterances, and proportion of errors in obligatory contexts for several early developing morphemes (-ing, -ed, plural -s, copula and auxiliary "be" forms) were calculated for each interaction. These measures, as well as standardized test scores will be compared across cognitive (DS, TD) and language (monolingual, bilingual) groups using two-way between subjects analyses of variance.