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Background Children’s executive functioning (EF) is often negatively associated with a developmental language disorder (DLD) and positively related to bilingualism. However, both regarding children with DLD and bilingual children, findings are mixed and few studies have investigated the combination of DLD and bilingualism in relation to EF. Aims This study investigated the effects of DLD and bilingualism on children’s EF development. Methods Monolingual and bilingual children with DLD and typical development (TD; N = 32 in each group) were tested three times with yearly intervals (MAGE = 71 months at time 1). Verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention, and inhibition were assessed. Results Monolinguals and bilinguals with DLD had weak working memory and inhibition skills at each time point compared to TD peers, which could partly be explained by verbal short-term memory limitations. Positive effects of bilingualism emerged when controlling for Dutch vocabulary and morphology skills, and were most pronounced at time 1. Conclusions Monolinguals and bilinguals with DLD have similar and persistent EF deficits, which are partly secondary to verbal short-term memory weaknesses. Bilinguals performed better on EF than monolinguals when Dutch language knowledge was controlled for. This effect was found regardless of DLD and was most prominent at age 5–6 years.

Purpose Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have weaknesses in executive functioning (EF), specifically in tasks testing interference control and working memory. It is unknown how EF develops in children with DLD, if EF abilities are related to DLD severity and persistence, and if EF weaknesses expand to selective attention. This study aimed to address these gaps. Method Data from 78 children with DLD and 39 typically developing (TD) children were collected at three times with 1-year intervals. At Time 1, the children were 5 or 6 years old. Flanker, Dot Matrix, and Sky Search tasks tested interference control, visuospatial working memory, and selective attention, respectively. DLD severity was based on children's language ability. DLD persistence was based on stability of the DLD diagnosis. Results Performance on all tasks improved in both groups. TD children outperformed children with DLD on interference control. No differences were found for visuospatial working memory and selective attention. An interference control gap between the DLD and TD groups emerged between Time 1 and Time 2. Severity and persistence of DLD were related to interference control and working memory; the impact on working memory was stronger. Selective attention was unrelated to DLD severity and persistence. Conclusions Age and DLD severity and persistence determine whether or not children with DLD show EF weaknesses. Interference control is most clearly impaired in children with DLD who are 6 years and older. Visuospatial working memory is impaired in children with severe and persistent DLD. Selective attention is spared.

This contribution provides an overview of the current state of affairs with respect to the Dutch version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). We describe properties of the Dutch MAIN, the creation of the Dutch MAIN, and the results of recent research with this new instrument to measure narrative competence.

Background and aims Recent research indicates that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often also score lower than their peers with typical development (TD) on tasks testing nonverbal executive functioning (EF). This study investigated whether there is evidence that children with DLD use linguistic and EF resources to support their lexical and syntactic development. Three questions were addressed: (1) How do children with DLD develop in the domains of lexicon and syntax, and how does their development compare to TD controls? (2) To what extent do children with DLD show reciprocal relations between lexical and syntactic skills, and how does this compare to TD controls? (3) Is EF ability related to DLD children’s lexical and syntactic skills, and how does this compare to TD controls? Methods Data from 117 children (NDLD = 78; NTD = 39) were collected three times with yearly intervals. At time 1, the children were 5 or 6 years old. Standardized receptive vocabulary and sentence repetition tests measured lexicon and syntax, respectively. Nonverbal EF tasks tested selective attention, interference control and working memory. Cross-lagged analyses were conducted to determine the direction of relationships. Results Both groups showed stable lexical and syntactic growth. In children with DLD, but not in TD controls, syntactic skills predicted lexical skills. In the DLD group, EF predicted lexical skills. Reversely, in the TD group, lexical skills predicted EF. Conclusions The results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that the lexical development of children with DLD is supported by both their verbal abilities in the domain of syntax and their nonverbal EF abilities. Implications Interventions that improve the syntactic and EF abilities of children with DLD may have spreading effects and positively impact on word learning by children with DLD.

Various studies have shown that bilingual children score lower than their monolingual peers on standardized receptive vocabulary tests. This study investigates if this effect is moderated by language distance. Dutch receptive vocabulary was tested with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). The impact of cross-language distance was examined by comparing bilingual groups with a small (Close; n = 165) and a large between-language distance (Distant; n = 108) with monolingual controls ( n = 39). As a group, the bilinguals scored lower on Dutch receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals. The bilingual Distant group had lower receptive vocabulary outcomes than the bilingual Close and monolingual groups. No difference emerged between the monolinguals and the bilingual Close group. It can be concluded that bilingual children whose languages provide ample opportunities for transfer and sharing knowledge do not have any receptive vocabulary delays. The findings underscore that bilingual children cannot be treated as a homogeneous group and are important for determining which bilingual children are at risk of low vocabulary outcomes.

Research on children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children is important for both clinical and theoretical reasons (Paradis, 2010). For example, identifying similarities and differences between the two child populations can support the clinical challenge of diagnosing LI in bilingual children, but can also inform us about the nature of LI. Additionally, such research can determine whether effects of bilingualism and LI accumulate and whether bilingualism aggravates or alleviates the symptoms of LI, strengthening our knowledge of children who are both dual language learners and diagnosed with LI. In the past few years, there has been a growing body of work that tackled these issues, focusing mostly on children’s language abilities. The current dissertation contributes to this body of work by investigating the effects of LI and bilingualism on children’s skills in both linguistic and cognitive domains, including studies that evaluated promising clinical tools, that made cross- and within-domain comparisons, and that took a developmental perspective. In doing so, we aimed to (1) support a reliable diagnosis of LI in bilingual contexts, (2) identify the risks and strengths of bilingual children with LI, and (3) provide insight into the origins of the partially overlapping language profiles of bilingual children and children with LI. The results of the studies in the present dissertation show that three recently developed instruments can contribute to a reliable diagnosis of LI in (monolingual and) bilingual learning contexts. Combining parental report on a child’s early language development with the child’s performance on a quasi-universal nonword repetition task and a narrative task testing macrostructure demonstrated excellent clinical accuracy, irrespective of the linguistic background of the child (or parents). In addition, our results indicate that vocabulary may be a particular risk area for bilingual children with LI, as the effects of bilingualism aggravated the effects of LI in this domain. In contrast, working memory was found to be a relative strength of bilingual children with LI, who performed better in this area than monolingual peers with LI when controlling for language ability. Finally, our findings suggest that the overlapping language profiles of children with LI and bilingual children may be explained by the weakened ability of children with LI to maintain attention to the stream of linguistic information, interfering with how well incoming language is processed. While reductions in input frequency cause language delays in bilingual children, the functional equivalent, i.e., incomplete processing of input, may impair the language proficiency of children with LI.

Background: The language profiles of children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children can show partial, and possibly temporary, overlap. The current study examined the persistence of this overlap over time. Furthermore, we aimed to better understand why the language profiles of these two groups show resemblance, testing the hypothesis that the language difficulties of children with LI reflect a weakened ability to maintain attention to the stream of linguistic information. Consequent incomplete processing of language input may lead to delays that are similar to those originating from reductions in input frequency. Methods: Monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (N = 128), aged 5–8 years old, participated in this study. Dutch receptive vocabulary and grammatical morphology were assessed at three waves. In addition, auditory and visual sustained attention were tested at wave 1. Mediation analyses were performed to examine relationships between LI, sustained attention, and language skills. Results: Children with LI and bilingual children were outperformed by their typically developing (TD) and monolingual peers, respectively, on vocabulary and morphology at all three waves. The vocabulary difference between monolinguals and bilinguals decreased over time. In addition, children with LI had weaker auditory and visual sustained attention skills relative to TD children, while no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals emerged. Auditory sustained attention mediated the effect of LI on vocabulary and morphology in both the monolingual and bilingual groups of children. Visual sustained attention only acted as a mediator in the bilingual group. Conclusion: The findings from the present study indicate that the overlap between the language profiles of children with LI and bilingual children is particularly large for vocabulary in early (pre)school years and reduces over time. Results furthermore suggest that the overlap may be explained by the weakened ability of children with LI to sustain their attention to auditory stimuli, interfering with how well incoming language is processed.

Purpose Grammatical morphology is often a locus of difficulty for both children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children. In contrast to previous research that mainly focused on verbal tense and agreement markings, the present study investigated whether plural and past participle formation can disentangle the effects of LI and bilingualism and, in addition, can point to weaknesses of LI that hold across monolingual and bilingual contexts. Method Monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (n = 33 per group) were tested at 2 waves with a word formation task that elicited Dutch noun plurals and past participles. The quantity and quality of errors as well as children's development over time were examined. Results The plural formation task discriminated between monolingual children with and without LI, but a less differentiated picture emerged in the bilingual group. Moreover, plural accuracy showed fully overlapping language profiles of monolinguals with LI and bilinguals without LI, in contrast to accuracy scores on the past participle formation task. Error analyses suggested that frequent omission of participial affixes may be indicative of LI, irrespective of lingual status. Conclusion The elicited production of past participles may support a reliable diagnosis of LI in monolingual and bilingual learning contexts.

Language delays of bilingual children can arise from language impairment (LI) but also from insufficient exposure to the target language. A reliable diagnosis of LI in bilingual children is therefore ideally based on the evaluation of both languages, as LI affects each language that is learned. However, due to the multitude of language combinations that are encountered in clinical practice, this is often not feasible. Bilingual norm-referencing may offer a solution, but the heterogeneity within the bilingual population makes it difficult to determine appropriate standards for every child. The present study examined an alternative approach to assessing both languages or using bilingual norm-referencing, aiming to assemble instruments that reduce bias against bilingual children. We used a four-group design, including monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (N = 132), to first investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on risks associated with a child’s early language development and the prevalence of language problems in the family, as reported by parents. Second, we evaluated the diagnostic validity of these two indices, and, in addition, combined these with two unbiased language measures which we previously examined in isolation: a quasi-universal nonword repetition task and a narrative task. Results showed that the index of Early Language Development was a strong predictor of LI. In combination with the two direct language measures, it excellently identified the presence or absence of LI in and across monolingual and bilingual learning contexts. Learning outcomes: As a result of this study, the reader will learn about an alternative approach to testing a bilingual child in both languages. The reader will recognize the importance of using unbiased measures for the identification of LI in a bilingual context, and, in addition, will appreciate the value of combining parental report with direct language measures.

Many studies have shown that bilingual children outperform monolinguals on tasks testing executive functioning, but other studies have not revealed any effect of bilingualism. In this study we compared three groups of bilingual children in the Netherlands, aged six-to-seven years, with a monolingual control group. We were specifically interested in testing whether the bilingual cognitive advantage is modulated by the sociolinguistic context of language use. All three bilingual groups were exposed to a minority language besides the nation’s dominant language (Dutch). Two bilingual groups were exposed to a regional language (Frisian, Limburgish), and a third bilingual group was exposed to a migrant language (Polish). All children participated in two working memory tasks (verbal, visuospatial) and two attention tasks (selective attention, interference suppression). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on selective attention. The cognitive effect of bilingualism was most clearly present in the Frisian-Dutch group and in a subgroup of migrant children who were relatively proficient in Polish. The effect was less robust in the Limburgish-Dutch sample. Investigation of the response patterns of the flanker test, testing interference suppression, suggested that bilingual children more often show an effect of response competition than the monolingual children, demonstrating that bilingual children attend to different aspects of the task than monolingual children. No bilingualism effects emerged for verbal and visuospatial working memory.

Background Understanding and expressing a narrative's macro-structure is relatively independent of experience in a specific language. A narrative task is therefore assumed to be a less biased method of language assessment for bilingual children than many other norm-referenced tests and may thus be particularly valuable to identify language impairment (LI) in a bilingual context. Aims The present study aimed to investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on macrostructural narrative skills. Moreover, it evaluated the diagnostic validity of a narrative task within a monolingual and bilingual sample. Methods & Procedures Five- and 6-year-old mono- and bilingual children with and without LI (N = 33 per group) were tested on production and comprehension measures of narrative macro-structure. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used to investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on their narrative abilities. Binary logistic regressions were conducted to evaluate the instrument's diagnostic value. Outcomes & Results Negative effects of LI were found on all narrative measures, whereas no effects of bilingualism emerged. The narrative task adequately differentiated between both mono- and bilingual children with and without LI, with story elements related to internal states being more effective than elements related to the basic episode structure. Conclusions & Implications This study confirms the hypothesis that measures of narrative macro-structure are not biased against children who have less experience with a particular language, like bilinguals. In addition, it indicates that using narratives to assess children's language abilities can support the identification of LI in both a monolingual and a bilingual context.

Language delays of bilingual children can arise from language impairment (LI) but also from insufficient exposure to the target language. A reliable diagnosis of LI in bilingual children is therefore ideally based on the evaluation of both languages, as LI affects each language that is learned. However, due to the multitude of language combinations that are encountered in clinical practice, this is often not feasible. Bilingual norm-referencing may offer a solution, but the heterogeneity within the bilingual population makes it difficult to determine appropriate standards for every child. The present study examined an alternative approach to assessing both languages or using bilingual norm-referencing, aiming to assemble instruments that reduce bias against bilingual children. We used a four-group design, including monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (N = 132), to first investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on risks associated with a child’s early language development and the prevalence of language problems in the family, as reported by parents. Second, we evaluated the diagnostic validity of these two indices, and, in addition, combined these with two unbiased language measures which we previously examined in isolation: a quasi-universal nonword repetition task and a narrative task. Results showed that the index of Early Language Development was a strong predictor of LI. In combination with the two direct language measures, it excellently identified the presence or absence of LI in and across monolingual and bilingual learning contexts. Learning outcomes: As a result of this study, the reader will learn about an alternative approach to testing a bilingual child in both languages. The reader will recognize the importance of using unbiased measures for the identification of LI in a bilingual context, and, in addition, will appreciate the value of combining parental report with direct language measures.