All children produce non-adult-like grammatical forms (e.g., omissions, substitutions) in the process of acquiring the language(s) in their environment. Often, use of these forms is part of typical language development; in other cases, non-adult-like forms are indicative of developmental language disorder (DLD). For children acquiring multiple languages, additional variability in language use is expected, as their experiences with each language vary. For accurate assessment in speech-language pathology, measures must differentiate typical and atypical development within the variability of dual language learning. Recent research indicates that measuring productivity – or the diversity and flexibility of children’s morphosyntactic skills – may be helpful in meeting this need: across speaker populations, typical language development is characterised by relatively greater productivity. However, available work has largely prioritised productivity within accurate productions. Presently, we ask: what are patterns of productivity in the context of non-adult-like forms in the spontaneous language samples of preschool-aged Spanish-English bilinguals? Analyses were conducted in both languages, and, as predicted, typically developing bilinguals (n = 15; age range = 3;11-4;11 [years;months]) produced non-adult-like forms that demonstrated productivity, or the (over)use of grammatical markers (e.g., substitutions, overregularisations) in both Spanish and English. Conversely, non-adult-like forms produced by three bilingual peers with DLD (ages 3;10, 4;1 and 4;3) were primarily characterised by limited productivity (i.e., omissions). Patterns observed here align with previous research and with the profile of DLD, in which children demonstrate difficulty learning and using grammatical markers. Additionally, present findings revealed cross-linguistic differences in productivity across English and Spanish, likely stemming from differences in grammatical structures between languages and, relatedly, differences in grammatical forms prioritised in assessment for each language. Present findings motivate further work in descriptive analyses of language use (i.e., identifying productive vs. non-productive forms) to improve our understanding of bilingual language development and to support clinical decision-making.

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With bilingual children, intervention for speech sound disorders must consider both of the child’s phonological systems, which are known to interact with each other in development. Further, cross-linguistic generalization following intervention for bilingual children with speech sound disorders (i.e. the impact of treatment in one language on the other) has been documented to varying degrees in some prior studies. However, none to date have documented the cross-linguistic impact of treatment with complex targets (e.g. consonant clusters) for bilingual children. Because complex phonological targets have been shown to induce system-wide generalization within a single language, the potential for bilingual children to generalize learning across languages could impact the efficiency of intervention in this population. This pilot intervention study examines the system-wide, cross-linguistic effects of treatment targeting consonant clusters in Spanish for two Spanish–English bilingual children with phonological disorder. Treatment was provided with 40-minute sessions in Spanish via teletherapy, three times per week for six weeks. Comprehensive phonological probes were administered in English and Spanish prior to intervention and across multiple baselines. Pre-intervention data were compared to data from probes administered during and after intervention to generate qualitative and quantitative measures of treatment outcomes and cross-linguistic generalization. Results indicate a medium effect size for system-wide generalization in Spanish (the language of treatment) and English (not targeted in treatment), for both participants (mean effect size in Spanish: 3.6; English 4.3). These findings have implications for across-language transfer and system-wide generalization in treatment for bilingual children.

Numerous studies suggest that speakers of some tone languages show advantages in musical pitch processing compared to non-tone language speakers. A recent study in adults (Jasmin et al., 2021) suggests that in addition to heightened pitch sensitivity, tone language speakers weight pitch information more strongly than other auditory cues (amplitude, duration) in both linguistic and nonlinguistic settings compared to non-tone language speakers. The current study asks whether pitch upweighting is evident in early childhood. To test this, two groups of 3- to 5-year-old children—tone-language speakers (n = 48), a group previously shown to have a perceptual advantage in musical pitch tasks (Creel et al., 2018), and non-tone-language speakers (n = 48)—took part in a musical “word learning” task. Children associated two cartoon characters with two brief musical phrases differing in both musical instrument and contour. If tone language speakers weight pitch more strongly, cue conflict trials should show stronger pitch responding than for non-tone speakers. In contrast to both adult speakers’ stronger pitch weighting and child and adult pitch perception advantages, tone-language-speaking children did not show greater weighting of pitch information than non-tone-language speaking children. This suggests a slow developmental course for pitch reweighting, contrasting with apparent early emergence of pitch sensitivity.