Identification of Specific Language Impairment in Bilingual Children: I. Assessment in English

Abstract

Purpose-This study was designed to derive cut scores for English testing for use in identifying specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children who were learning English as a second language.Method-In a 1-gate design, 167 children received comprehensive language assessments in English and Spanish during their first-grade year. The reference standard was identification by a team of expert bilingual speech-language pathologists. Receiver operating curve (ROC) analyses were used to identify the optimal prediction model for SLI. (Tomblin, Records, & Zhang, 1996) yielded a sensitivity of .95 and a specificity of .45 (LR+ = 1.73, LR− = 0.11, and AUC = .79) for our bilinguals. Revised cutoff scores yielded a sensitivity of .86 and a specificity of .68 (LR+ = 2.67, LR− = 0.21, and AUC = .77). An optimal prediction model yielded a sensitivity of .81 and a specificity of .81 (LR+ = 4.37, LR− = 0.23 and AUC = .85). Results-The original, English EpiSLI criteria Conclusion-The results of English testing could be used to make a reasonably accurate diagnostic decision for bilingual children who had attended public school for at least 1 year and were using English at least 30% of the time. Keywordsassessment; bilingualism; children; language disorders; specific language impairment; primary language impairments Diagnosing specific language impairment (SLI) in children is difficult under the best of circumstances. The most common practice is to base diagnostic decisions on low scores on standardized language measures. Unfortunately, publishers of standardized tests rarely provide empirically based cutoff scores that yield the highest levels of sensitivity (correct identification of children with SLI) and specificity (correct identification of typically developing children). In a review of 43 commercially available child language tests, Spaulding, Plante, and Farinella (2006) found that many publishers recommended arbitrary Correspondence to Ron Gillam: ron.gillam@usu.edu. Disclosure: Ronald B. Gillam has a financial interest in the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004). HHS Public AccessAuthor manuscript J Speech Lang Hear Res. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 April 16.Published in final edited form as: J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2013 December ; 56(6): 1813-1823. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2013. Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript cutoff scores that were likely to identify typical children as impaired. Spaulding et al. (2006) concluded that there is a need for more research that derives empirically based cutoff scores for identifying SLI in specific populations of children.Perhaps the most influential study of the diagnosis of SLI was a large-scale epidemiological study by Tomblin, Records, and Zhang (1996). Their diagnostic criteria, known as the EpiSLI model, was based on an the analysis of five composite scores (expressive, receptive, vocabulary, grammar, and narration) that were derived from performance on the Test of Language Development-Primary (Newcomer & Ham...

Redefining ‘Chinese’ L1 in SLP: Considerations for the assessment of Chinese bilingual/bidialectal language skills

“…It is generally believed that bilingual children present with poorer performance on measures of L1 and L2 compared to monolingual speakers (Gillam et al, 2013). The above observations suggest, however, different dialectal backgrounds in L1 will also make a difference in children's syntactic performance in L2.…”

“…For example, Spaulding, Plante and Farinella (2006) found most available tests of English linguistic abilities are not as reliable as they should be. This is because most tests use arbitrary cutoff scores, instead of empirically derived cut scores for identification, while sensitivity and specificity values were not available or could not be calculated for most tests (also see Gillam et al, 2013Gillam et al, , p. 1820.…”

“…It is a global phenomenon that bilingual children are likely to be overidentified and/or underidentified for language impairment or learning disabilities (Bedore & Peña, 2008;Gillam et al, 2013). MacWhinney (2005), taking a functional perspective, pointed out that similar forms between L1 and L2 are more salient to the speaker so that they are more highly frequently used, while those forms unique to L1 or L2 are less salient and less likely to be used.…”

“…learner may use to access the target structures, to replace the more complex ones in the target language (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996), or simply use a low-frequency or unusual construction (Bedore & Peña, 2008 (2008) It is also proposed that, rather than prediction, information from observations should serve to improve the accuracy of diagnostic decisions with regard to bilingual/bidialectal children (Gillam et al, 2013). The following examples (11)- (16) (11)- (15) and both young and adult learners for (16)).…”

“…For speech-language pathologists (SLPs), un-biased language assessment of bilingual children can be complex (Gillam, Peña, Bedore, Bohman, & Mendez-Perez, 2013). It becomes even more complicated when involving bidialectal L1 speakers.…”