Effective and efficient identification of developmental language disorder in bilinguals

What is it about?

Many children grow up learning more than one language, which can make it harder to recognize developmental language disorder (DLD). DLD is a condition where children struggle to learn and use language. Because bilingual children may use different languages at home and at school, it can be challenging for clinicians to know whether language difficulties are due to DLD or simply part of learning multiple languages. In our study, we tested a wide range of language skills in bilingual children with and without DLD. Using advanced analyses, we found that just four tasks were enough to reliably identify bilingual children with DLD. These are a parental questionnaire about home language abilities, a nonword repetition task, a sentence repetition task, and a task that measures understanding of word meanings and grammar. This combination gave very accurate results, while saving valuable time for clinicians.

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Photo by Gabriel Vasiliu on Unsplash

Photo by Gabriel Vasiliu on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study is crucial because most language assessments are designed for monolingual children, which can lead to misdiagnoses, unnecessary parental concern, and less effective therapy. By identifying a small set of measures that accurately detect DLD in bilingual children, this research helps speech-language pathologists make better-informed decisions and provides a practical, time-efficient tool for real-world clinical use. Misdiagnoses can be reduced, and the saved time can be used for more extensive assessments to inform therapy planning.

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