A Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition Task as a Diagnostic Tool for Bilingual Children Learning Dutch as a Second Language

作者：Boerma Tessel^*; Chiat Shula; Leseman Paul; Timmermeister Mona; Wijnen Frank; Blom Elma

来源：Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2015, 58(6): 1747-1760.

DOI：10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-15-0058

Purpose: This study evaluated a newly developed quasi-universal nonword repetition task (Q-U NWRT) as a diagnostic tool for bilingual children with language impairment (LI) who have Dutch as a 2nd language. The Q-U NWRT was designed to be minimally influenced by knowledge of 1 specific language in contrast to a language-specific NWRT with which it was compared.
Method: One hundred twenty monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI participated (30 per group). A mixed-design analysis of variance was used to investigate the effects of LI and bilingualism on the NWRTs. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were conducted to evaluate the instruments' diagnostic value.
Results: Large negative effects of LI were found on both NWRTs, whereas negative effects of bilingualism only occurred on the language-specific NWRT. Both instruments had high clinical accuracy in the monolingual group, but only the Q-U NWRT had high clinical accuracy in the bilingual group.
Conclusions: This study indicates that the Q-U NWRT is a promising diagnostic tool to help identify LI in bilingual children learning Dutch as a 2nd language. The instrument was clinically accurate in both a monolingual and bilingual group of children and seems better able to disentangle LI from language disadvantage than more language-specific measures.

• 出版日期2015-12