Purpose This study examines the absolute and relative effects of three different treatment programs for school-aged bilingual children with primary or specific language impairment (PLI). It serves to expand the evidence base on which service providers can base treatment decisions. It also explores hypothesized relations between languages and cognition in bilinguals with PLI. Method Fifty-nine school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI were assigned to receive nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, bilingual (Spanish-English), or deferred treatment. Participants in each of the three active treatments received treatment administered by nationally certified speech-language pathologists. Pre- and post-treatment assessments measured change in nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, and Spanish skills, and analyses examined change within and across both treatment groups and skill domains. Results All active treatment groups made significant pre- to post-treatment improvement on multiple outcome measures. There were fewer significant changes in Spanish than in English across groups. Between group comparisons indicate that the active treatment groups generally outperformed the deferred treatment control, reaching statistical significance for two tasks. Conclusions Results provide insight into cross-language transfer in bilingual children and advance understanding of the general PLI profile with respect to relationships between basic cognitive processing and higher level language skills.

Purpose Despite the long history of language sampling use in the study of child language development and disorders, there are no set guidelines specifying the reporting of language sampling procedures. The authors propose reporting standards for use by investigators who employ language samples in their research. Method The authors conducted a literature search of child-focused studies published in journals of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association between January 2000 and December 2011 that included language sampling procedures to help characterize child participants or to derive measures to serve as dependent variables. Following this search, they reviewed each study and documented the language sampling procedures reported. Results The authors’ synthesis revealed that approximately 25% of all child-focused studies use language samples to help characterize participants and/or derive dependent variables. They found remarkable inconsistencies in the reporting of language sampling procedures. Conclusion To maximize the conclusions drawn from research using language samples, the authors strongly encourage investigators of child language to consistently report language sampling procedures using the proposed reporting checklist.

The purpose of this study was to better understand bilingualism in Persian-English preschool-aged children, and how their language performance across two domains of language related to their language production and parental language input. Participants were 15, 2- through 5-year old Persian-English bilingual children attending a Persian immersion preschool in the U.S. The participants completed a battery of language tasks in English and Persian and participants’ parents provided language input and production information. Data indicate that greater input in the heritage language outside school, Persian, will likely lead to better Persian skills, while greater English input may negatively affect the children’s Persian skills. Participants received consistent native-level Persian input in school, yet the results suggest that Persian as a heritage language in the U.S. may be susceptible to the same vulnerability that affects other non-mainstream languages.

Purpose: Cognates, words in two languages that share form and meaning, can be used to support vocabulary development in bilingual children. Typically developing bilinguals have shown better performance on cognates versus noncognates. Of key interest is whether bilinguals with developmental language disorder (DLD) also show a cognate effect and, if so, which factors are related to their cognate performance. Method: Thirty-five Spanish–English bilingual children (5–11 years old) with DLD completed the Expressive and Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Tests, third edition, in English (EOW, ROW) to measure cognate performance. Test items were divided by difficulty level (easy, medium, and hard) and classified as cognates or noncognates using the Cross-Linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology. Results: On average, children showed clear and robust cognate effects on EOW across difficulty levels with medium-to-large effect sizes. Results on the ROW showed minimal effects that varied by difficulty. Individually, 80% of participants (28 of 35) demonstrated a cognate effect in EOW, whereas only 31% (11 of 35) showed an effect in ROW. A cognate effect in ROW was positively correlated with age and English proficiency, whereas no factors correlated with the EOW cognate effect. Conclusions: Bilingual children with DLD show higher performance on cognates than noncognates, at least in expressive vocabulary. Participants who did show a receptive cognate effect tended to be older and have higher English proficiency. Further investigation is needed to identify factors underlying cognate performance in order to tailor intervention strategies that promote bilingual vocabulary development.