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We examined the narrative abilities of bilingual and monolingual children on the autism spectrum (AS), whether bilinguals presented stronger social and pragmatic language abilities compared to monolinguals, and the link between narrative, social, and pragmatic language abilities.The narrative, social, and pragmatic language skills of school-aged bilinguals (n = 54) and monolinguals (n = 80) on the AS were assessed using normed measures. Language exposure was estimated through a parent questionnaire.Bilinguals performed similarly to monolinguals on measures of narrative, social, and pragmatic language skills. However, balanced bilinguals performed better on a nonliteral language task.Overall, results indicate that bilingual children on the AS can become as proficient in using language as monolinguals and may enjoy a bilingual advantage.

Both clinicians and researchers agree on the importance of supporting a socially relevant language use in children at risk for communication disorders. Although we have some information on best practices for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the evidence for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is scarce. Even if there is a growing body of literature discussing the efficacy of speech and language interventions in preschool and school settings, these interventions have focused primarily on early literacy skills (including vo cabulary and discourse abilities) to prepare all children to enter school. Despite this lack of evidence in the literatur e, clinicians have developed skillful strategies to support and facilitate the development of other pragmatic skills such as conversation abilities. The purpose of this manuscript is to discuss the theo retical foundations of pragmatic interventions with children having DLD and to present an example of an intervention based on theoretical foundations and clinical experience.

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International audience

Inferencing abilities are crucial to development of reading comprehension. However, few studies addressed those abilities in interventions promoting early literacy skills, especially in kindergartners. The aim of this study was to measure the efficacy of an interactive book-reading intervention targeting inferencing abilities, delivered by a school-based speech-language pathologist (SLP) in whole group kindergarten classes. Two hundred and forty-nine 5-year-old kindergartners from low socio-economic settings were quasi-randomly assigned to either one of the experimental groups (EG1 and EG2) or an active control group (CG). EG1 received a 7-week interactive book-reading intervention followed by a 7-week period where it was up to the teachers to implement aspects of the intervention in their teaching or not. EG2 received the 7-week interactive book-reading intervention only and the active control group received an initial workshop only. Three subtests targeting (1) causal inferences during book-reading, (2) causal inferences in a formal task, and (3) referential inferences in a formal task were performed at pre- and post-intervention assessments. There was a significant Time × Group interaction effect for the first subtest indicating an advantage for EG1 compared to CG over time. EG2 appeared as an intermediary group as its results were not different from EG1 and showing only a trend toward significance ( p = 0.064) when compared to CG. There was no significant Time × Group interaction effect for the second subtest. A significant Time × Group interaction effect was present for the third subtest, EG1 and EG2 showing larger improvement than CG.

Preschool-aged bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can keep pace with their monolingual peers with ASD. However, can older children with ASD continue to do so as language demands become greater? Also, can they reach language levels similar to those of neurotypically developing (ND) bilingual children? The current study compares the language abilities of 3 school-aged bilingual children with ASD to those of 2 monolingual peers, and 19 ND bilingual and 12 ND monolingual peers. Using cluster analyses, we found that bilingual children with ASD had similar language to those of monolingual children with ASD and neurotypically developing bilingual and monolingual children. Results suggest that bilingual children with ASD can keep pace with their peers with similar intellectual abilities.

Purpose Knowledge of verb development in typically developing bilingual preschoolers may inform clinicians about verb accuracy rates during the 1st 2 years of English instruction. This study aimed to investigate tensed verb accuracy in 2 assessment contexts in 4- and 5-year-old Cantonese–English bilingual preschoolers. Method The sample included 47 Cantonese–English bilinguals enrolled in English preschools. Half of the children were in their 1st 4 months of English language exposure, and half had completed 1 year and 4 months of exposure to English. Data were obtained from the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (Rice & Wexler, 2001) and from a narrative generated in English. Results By the 2nd year of formal exposure to English, children in the present study approximated 33% accuracy of tensed verbs in a formal testing context versus 61% in a narrative context. The use of the English verb BE approximated mastery. Predictors of English third-person singular verb accuracy were task, grade, English expressive vocabulary, and lemma frequency. Conclusions Verb tense accuracy was low across both groups, but a precocious mastery of BE was observed. The results of the present study suggest that speech-language pathologists may consider, in addition to an elicitation task, evaluating the use of verbs during narratives in bilingual Cantonese–English bilingual children.

This article aims to account for the impact of the interactional setting on adults’ referential uses by determining if telling a story to/with a child impacts the referential strategies of adults. The long-term goal of this study is to better understand the models of reference in narratives children are exposed to in order to account for young children’s uses. The study analysed the referring expressions of 20 women telling a story with their child (5 to 7 years old) (CHILD condition), and 20 women telling the same story to an adult experimenter (ADULT condition). Referring expressions were coded according to their linguistic type, their position in the referential chain and the properties of the referents. Results revealed differences between the two settings in the referential choices for the first mention and the reactivation of a referent. Overall, in the CHILD condition, the participants used a wider range of referring expressions than in the ADULT condition. In the CHILD condition participants were oriented towards the interactional demands of enlisting the child in the task and keeping his/her attention. The findings suggest that the models children experience differ from adults’ uses, which are generally considered as the developmental target.

Par son role determinant dans la reussite scolaire et professionnelle, ainsi que dans l’insertion sociale, l’apprentissage de l’orthographe lexicale represente un defi majeur pour les eleves du primaire. Dans ce contexte, nombreux sont les enseignants, orthophonistes et chercheurs a s’interesser a la question des outils utiles a son enseignement et a son apprentissage, et a avoir recours notamment a des bases de donnees lexicales. Bien qu’elles constituent un apport considerable pour le domaine, les ressources existantes souffrent de plusieurs insuffisances. D’une part, elles s’appuient sur des corpus de reference peu representatifs du lexique scolaire auquel les eleves sont exposes au primaire, et d’autre part, elles ne permettent pas aux utilisateurs de determiner la facon dont se developpe l’acquisition de l’orthographe lexicale. A la lumiere de ces constats, nous avons elabore une ressource lexicale hybride, rendant compte a la fois de la frequence et des caracteristiques linguistiques du lexique scolaire present dans les manuels du primaire au Quebec et, pour une partie des mots de ce lexique, de la capacite des eleves a les orthographier a chaque niveau du primaire. Dans cet article, nous revenons dans un premier temps sur la methodologie d’elaboration de cette nouvelle base de donnees - nommee EQOL - dotee d’une Echelle Quebecoise d’acquisition de l’Orthographe Lexicale, a l’origine de la creation de la base de donnees. Dans un deuxieme temps, nous evaluons l’apport de cet outil. La comparaison de notre base de donnees (Stanke, Royle, Rezzonico, Moreau, Dumais & Le Mene 2018) a des outils existants (trois bases de donnees et une echelle d’acquisition lexicale) temoigne de la pertinence de la creation d’un outil propre au lexique scolaire adresse aux eleves du primaire et de la necessite d’utiliser une nouvelle echelle d’acquisition de l’orthographe lexicale, specifique aux competences orthographiques des eleves quebecois.

Background The body of literature on narratives of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) is growing. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of bilingual preschool children with SLI and their patterns of growth. Aims To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between preschoolers with and without SLI who are either monolingual or bilingual at two time points. Methods & Procedures Forty children completed a narrative retell task in English at two test points. The mean ages were 52 and 58 months at Times 1 and 2, respectively. We examined performance on measures of narrative macrostructure (narrative information) and microstructure (sentence length, number of different words, verb accuracy, first mentions) in monolingual and bilingual children with and without SLI. The bilingual children were from diverse first-language backgrounds and all spoke English most of the time. Outcomes & Results A series of repeated-measures analyses of variance was used with language ability (typical development or SLI) and bilingual status (monolingual versus bilingual) as the between-subjects factors and time (Times 1 or 2) as the within-subjects factor. Results indicated a significant main effect of time for four measures (i.e., Information Score, lexical diversity, sentence length and verb accuracy). The between-subjects analyses indicated a significant difference between the typically developing children and the children with SLI in all measures and a significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children for verb accuracy only. Conclusions & Implications This study showed that all four groups of children showed growth over a 6-month period and that bilingual children exposed predominantly to English in the home performed similarly to their monolingual peers in measures of narrative information, sentence length, number of different words and first mentions.

Evidence-based practices are at the centre of clinical and political discourse about health care. Interaction between researchers and clinical professionals is crucial in order to define and apply the best practices interventions. This contribution explores the role of the systematic observation of interactions in the development of Speech-Language Pathology interventions. In particular, the article proposes a distinction between intervention programs that use interaction as a medium to improve or facilitate language acquisition and interventions whose focus is social interaction. The discussion explores further perspectives for researchers and professionals.

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In questo articolo vengono investigate le rappresentazioni e le pratiche dichiarate dei giovani italofoni raccolte grazie a dei questionari sottoposti a degli informatori del Mendrisiotto (in Svizzera) e della regione italiana confinante (Como). Da un lato come dall’altro della frontiera, i giovani sembrano attribuire alla lingua dei giovani (ben che formalmente ci siano alcune differenze) la stessa funzione fortemente identitaria e delle caratteristiche d’uso situazionali.

Cet article etudie l’usage des gestes par 18 dyades mere-enfant dysphasique en comparaison avec 18 dyades mere-enfant typique dans une situation de jeu de devinette par indices. Tous les enfants sont âges entre 5 et 7 ans.Les analyses concernent la proportion, les roles ainsi que la nature semiotique des gestes utilises comme indices dans le jeu de devinettes. Les resultats aboutissent a des differences quantitatives et qualitatives dans l’emploi des gestes entre les deux types de dyades. Meme si globalement la devinette se profile comme une activite essentiellement verbale, il apparait que les enfants mobilisent plus souvent les gestes pour la production d’indices que leurs meres et que les dyades mere-enfant dysphasique presentent des taux plus eleves de gestes que les dyades mere-enfant typique.Par ailleurs, les resultats mettent en evidence des specificites chez les enfants dysphasiques. Ils semblent utiliser davantage de gestes deictiques et certains d’entre eux ont recours plus souvent aux gestes illustratifs, se substituant au verbal. L’etude montre egalement une certaine heterogeneite des dyades dans les deux groupes de la population.

Purpose The aim of this study was to compare narratives generated by 4-year-old and 5-year-old children who were bilingual in English and Cantonese. Method The sample included 47 children (23 who were 4 years old and 24 who were 5 years old) living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who spoke both Cantonese and English. The participants spoke and heard predominantly Cantonese in the home. Participants generated a story in English and Cantonese by using a wordless picture book; language order was counterbalanced. Data were transcribed and coded for story grammar, morphosyntactic quality, mean length of utterance in words, and the number of different words. Results Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed higher story grammar scores in English than in Cantonese, but no other significant main effects of language were observed. Analyses also revealed that older children had higher story grammar, mean length of utterance in words, and morphosyntactic quality scores than younger children in both languages. Hierarchical regressions indicated that Cantonese story grammar predicted English story grammar and Cantonese microstructure predicted English microstructure. However, no correlation was observed between Cantonese and English morphosyntactic quality. Conclusions The results of this study have implications for speech-language pathologists who collect narratives in Cantonese and English from bilingual preschoolers. The results suggest that there is a possible transfer in narrative abilities between the two languages. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14963805

Purpose The objective of this study was to examine the effects of coaching by speech-language pathologists on educators' interactive shared book reading, children's participation in shared reading, and children's language development. Method Thirty-two educators and small groups of preschoolers were randomly assigned to experimental and comparison groups. The experimental group ( n = 15) received 4 in-service workshops plus 5 individualized coaching sessions. The comparison group received only the 4 workshops. Participants were video-recorded during a shared book reading activity with a small group of children at pretest and posttest. The video recordings were transcribed and coded to yield measures of conversations, educators' questions, and children's responses. The mean length of utterances of the children's responses was also calculated. Results There were no significant Time × Group interaction effects for the number and length of shared reading conversations or for the number of participants in these conversations. However, significant Time × Group interactions were observed for the use of educators' experiential reasoning questions, children's experiential reasoning responses, and the mean length of utterances of children's responses. Conclusion These results suggest that coaching increases educators' use of inferential questions, enhancing an interactive shared-reading strategy that had a direct impact on the children's quality and complexity of language.

The body of literature on narratives of bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) is growing. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of bilingual preschool children with SLI and their patterns of growth.To determine the similarities and differences in narrative abilities between preschoolers with and without SLI who are either monolingual or bilingual at two time points.Forty children completed a narrative retell task in English at two test points. The mean ages were 52 and 58 months at Times 1 and 2, respectively. We examined performance on measures of narrative macrostructure (narrative information) and microstructure (sentence length, number of different words, verb accuracy, first mentions) in monolingual and bilingual children with and without SLI. The bilingual children were from diverse first-language backgrounds and all spoke English most of the time.A series of repeated-measures analyses of variance was used with language ability (typical development or SLI) and bilingual status (monolingual versus bilingual) as the between-subjects factors and time (Times 1 or 2) as the within-subjects factor. Results indicated a significant main effect of time for four measures (i.e., Information Score, lexical diversity, sentence length and verb accuracy). The between-subjects analyses indicated a significant difference between the typically developing children and the children with SLI in all measures and a significant difference between monolingual and bilingual children for verb accuracy only.This study showed that all four groups of children showed growth over a 6-month period and that bilingual children exposed predominantly to English in the home performed similarly to their monolingual peers in measures of narrative information, sentence length, number of different words and first mentions.

This study investigated maternal recast and the children's responses comparing dyads made up of a mother and a child with typical language development (TD) or a child with specific language impairment (SLI). More specifically, this article deals with the influence of the type of activity being carried out on the number and types of maternal recasts. A sample of 17 French-speaking children with SLI (age 5 to 7 years) matched with 17 TD same-age peers was observed in interaction with their mother during four different activities (joint reading, symbolic play, question guessing game and clue guessing game). The results showed that group and activity had an impact on the number and type of recasts. Mothers of children with SLI offered more recasts than mothers of TD children. The former preferred phonological recasts whereas the latter preferred lexical ones. Moreover, recasts were more frequently used in joint reading than in other activities. Regarding the children's responses, no significant difference was observed between the two groups. Children with SLI took up the maternal proposition more frequently after a lexical recast than after a recast of another type. The findings provide evidence for considering the features of the activities in clinical settings.

The aim of the present article was to investigate the characteristics of maternal scaffolding strategies to children with SLI as compared to normally developing children matched on age and to younger control children. Mother-child dyads were observed in two situations varying in terms of type of discursive activity: a guessing game and the reading of a picture book without text. Two types of scaffolding strategies were distinguished: linguistic (focusing on language support) and cognitive (focusing on task execution support). Results indicated qualitative and quantitative differences in the use of scaffolding strategies by mothers of SLI children. Indeed, they produced significantly more linguistic scaffolding strategies than mothers of normally developing and younger control children in both situations. As far as cognitive scaffolding was concerned, similarities and differences were observed between mothers of SLI children and mothers of normally developing and younger control children.

Genetic compatibility, nonspecific defenses, and environmental effects determine parasite resistance. Host mating system (selfing vs. outcrossing) should be important for parasite resistance because it determines the segregation of alleles at the resistance loci and because inbreeding depression may hamper immune defenses. Individuals of a mixed mating hermaphroditic freshwater snail, Lymnaea ovata, are commonly infected by a digenetic trematode parasite, Echinoparyphium recurvatum. We examined covariation between quantitative resistance to novel parasites and mating system by exposing snail families from four populations that differed by their inbreeding coefficients. We found that resistance was unrelated to inbreeding coefficient of the population, suggesting that the more inbred populations did not carry higher susceptibility load than the less inbred populations. Most of the variation in resistance was expressed among the families within the populations. In the population with the lowest inbreeding coefficient, resistance increased with outcrossing rate of the family, as predicted if selfing had led to inbreeding depression. In the other three populations with higher inbreeding coefficients, resistance was unrelated to outcrossing rate. The results suggest that in populations with higher inbreeding some of the genetic load has been purged, uncoupling the predicted relationship between outcrossing rate and resistance. Snail families also displayed crossing reaction norms for resistance when tested in two environments that presented low and high immune challenge, suggesting that genotype-by-environment interactions are important for parasite resistance.