Attention in Bilingual Children with Language Impairment



 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will examine two influences on the nonlinguistic attention skills of school-aged bilingual children with Primary (or Specific) Language Impairment (PLI). The first influence is PLI, which is defined by clinically significant delays in language skills yet associated with subclinical deficits in several nonlinguistic cognitie skills. The second influence is bilingualism, which appears to enhance specific cognitive skills in developing children. Whether the nonlinguistic cognitive deficits associated with PLI extend fully to bilingual children, or whether they are mitigated by the cognitive benefits of bilingualism, is not yet established. Attention is a key skill in both populations, as sustained selective attention appears impaired in children with PLI and attentional control appears enhanced in bilingual children. This project will determine whether bilingual children with PLI demonstrate deficits in sustained selective attention, as their monolingual peers with PLI do, and whether they demonstrate advantages in attentional control, as their typically developing bilingual peers do. Performance on visual nonlinguistic assessments of sustained selective attention and attentional control will be compared across four groups of 6- to 9- year old children (N = 30 per group): Spanish-English bilingual children with and without PLI and English monolingual children with and without PLI. In the area of sustained selective attention, it is hypothesized tha monolingual and bilingual children with PLI will perform below both groups of unaffected peers, indicating that the subtle cognitive impairments associated with PLI extend to bilingual children. In the area of attentional control, it is hypothesized that both groups of bilinguals will outperfom their monolingual peers and that the groups with PLI will perform more poorly than the unaffected groups. This pattern would suggest that attentional control may be impaired in children with PLI, but that the impairment can be mitigated by bilingual experience. Results of these comparisons will disentangle potentially competing influences on cognitive development. Clinically, the project will indicate the suitability of nonlinguistic assessments of attention in he identification of PLI within linguistically diverse populations, and also whether dual-language treatment for bilingual children with PLI can provide subtle cognitive benefits. Overall, the project will enhance understanding of the interactions between cognition, experience, and language in children with developmental communication disorders. It contributes towards the long- term goal of characterizing cognitive and social influences on language skills in bilingual children with PLI.