Capacités langagières des enfants bilingues présentant un trouble spécifique du langage oral

Language abilities of bilingual children with specific language impairment

In the present study, we examine the language abilities of bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) in their second language (L2). Language performance in French L2 of 14 bilingual SLI children aged 6 to 8 are compared to that of three control groups: (1) 20 bilingual children without SLI, (2) 17 monolingual SLI children and (3) 19 monolingual children without SLI. Language abilities were assessed within the domains of syntax (pronoun task), vocabulary (picture-naming task) and phonological short-term memory (non-word repetition task). The first goal was to assess whether a cumulative impact of SLI and bilingualism was observed on the performance in French of the bilingual SLI children. The second goal was to determine whether the three tasks administered distinguished SLI from typically developing children among bilinguals. No cumulative effect of SLI and bilingualism was found in any of the three domains explored, implying that SLI is not more severe in bilingual
children than in monolingual children. In contrast to the picture-naming task, both the elicitation task of pronoun objects and a non-word repetition task differentiated between bilingual children with and without SLI. This suggests that tasks tapping syntax and phonological short-term memory are more appropriate than tasks tapping vocabulary to distinguish SLI from typically developing children among bilinguals.