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Introduction: Lateral temporal neural measures (Na and T-complex Ta and Tb) of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) index auditory/speech processing and have been observed in children and adults. While Na is already present in children under 4 years of age, Ta emerges from 4 years of age, and Tb appears even later. The T-complex has been found to be sensitive to language experience in Spanish-English and Turkish-German children and adults. In particular, Ta elicited to a vowel has been found to be sensitive to language experience in bilingual preschool children. This paper examines neural responses in 4-to-6-year-old Italian-German bilingual and German monolingual children using language-specific phonetic cues for voicing. Methods: We tested children's processing of voicing features in bilabial stop consonants in relation to (1) their language status (i.e., being monolingual vs. bilingual) as well as to (2) their relative amount of current exposure to the heritage (Italian) and the societal language (German). Italian-German bilingual and German monolingual children were hypothesized to encode the temporal properties of a set of Voice Onset Time (VOT) stimuli differently as indexed by Ta and Tb. Results: The results revealed no main effects of language group, but interactions of group with hemisphere and stimulus. In particular, bilingual children showed less hemispheric differentiation and an attenuated (less positive) response at the right site (T8) for the 0 ms VOT stimulus during the Ta-Tb time window. Children with more German (and consequently, less Italian) input showed a more positive T8 response for the Na, Ta and Tb time intervals. Discussion: These findings partially replicated previous studies, but also revealed that stimulus factors modulate the response. They suggest that a delay in commitment is found only in bilinguals with less input in the target language, and those who are strongly dominant in one of the two languages will resemble monolinguals in the development of T-complex responses. However, the finding of greater Na positivity for German-dominant bilinguals suggests that their specific experience also influences processing, but perhaps via a different mechanism than found for the more balanced bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In bi- and monolingual children, nonword repetition tasks (NWRTs) differentiate between typically developing (TD) and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Language specificity is a crucial factor in nonword construction especially for multilingual children. While language-specific nonwords seem less artificial than non-specific nonwords, the application of language-specific phonemes may be less suitable for bilingual children who are exposed to the target language less than monolingual peers. This study evaluates the concurrent and predictive value of a novel, computerized NWRT implemented in the MuLiMi web-platform and its potential in the discrimination of bilingual children with and without DLD, investigating the role of nonwords' language specificity. Thirty-seven children (of whom 17 had an objective risk of phonological disorders) with at least one Italian-speaking parent, living and attending kindergartens in Germany were tested with the MuLiMi NWRT and German standardized language tests. Caregivers and kindergarten teachers filled in questionnaires. Fourteen of the children were re-tested after 8–12 months. The results suggest that the new test's concurrent and discriminative validity are good. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences between children with and without (an objective risk of) phonological disorders and a significant interaction between nonword specificity and risk group. Significant correlations of initial scores with follow-up scores collected after 8–12 months were also found, as well as correlations with improvements in language abilities. In conclusion, although both language-specific and language-non-specific nonword repetition can support DLD risk identification in bilingual children, language-specific stimuli appear to be particularly sensitive indicators. This is interpreted as confirming DLD children's reduced sensitivity to frequent, familiar characteristics of the linguistic stimuli. The test's discriminative and concurrent validity showed to be robust to various potentially influencing factors like patterns of language exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]