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Predicting language outcomes in bilingual children with Down syndrome
,
Eirini Sanoudaki
Child Neuropsychology, Volume: 30, Issue: 5, Pages: 760 - 782
Swansea University Author:
Rebecca Ward
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© 2023 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/09297049.2023.2275331
Abstract
Continuous approaches to measuring bilingualism have recently emerged as a means of understanding individual variation in language abilities. To date, limited information is available to assist in understanding the language abilities of bilingual children with Down syndrome (DS), who are specificall...
| Published in: | Child Neuropsychology |
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| ISSN: | 0929-7049 1744-4136 |
| Published: |
Informa UK Limited
2023
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| Online Access: |
Check full text
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65865 |
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| Abstract: |
Continuous approaches to measuring bilingualism have recently emerged as a means of understanding individual variation in language abilities. To date, limited information is available to assist in understanding the language abilities of bilingual children with Down syndrome (DS), who are specifically known to have a large variation in linguistic outcomes. Group studies in this population report that children exposed to two languages do not differ from their monolingual counterparts after considering age and non-verbal cognitive abilities, although no study to date has examined the relationship between the amount of exposure to one language and the linguistic abilities in the other language within this population. This study sought to identify whether exposure to an additional language, specifically Welsh, predicted linguistic abilities in the majority language, in this case, English. Sixty-five children between the ages of 5;5–16;9 who had varied linguistic experiences completed a range of cognitive and linguistic assessments. Results from hierarchical regression analyses show that the amount of exposure to Welsh had no impact on language abilities in English, after controlling for non-verbal cognitive abilities, short-term memory and socioeconomic status. This demonstrates that exposure to an additional language does not have a negative impact on language development, a finding that has important clinical and educational implications. |
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| Keywords: |
Down syndrome; bilingual; language acquisition; developmental disability; language disorders |
| College: |
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences |
| Funders: |
The authors are very grateful to the funders of this research, the ESRC Wales-DTP studentship (grant number 1790820) secured by the second author in collaboration with the UK Down’s Syndrome Association and awarded to the first author. We are very thankful to all the children, schools and families that participated in this project. We are very grateful to the UK Down’s Syndrome Association for collaborating and promoting this research with their networks. |
| Issue: |
5 |
| Start Page: |
760 |
| End Page: |
782 |