Language performance of sequential bilinguals on an Irish and English sentence repetition task

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 359-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislava Antonijevic ◽  
Ruth Durham ◽  
Íde Ní Chonghaile

Abstract Currently there are no standardized language assessments for English-Irish bilingual school age children that would test languages in a comparable way. There are also no standardized language assessments of Irish for this age group. The current study aimed to design comparable language assessments in both languages targeting structures known to be challenging for children with language impairments. A sentence repetition (SRep) task equivalent to the English SRep task (Marinis, Chiat, Armon-Lotem, Piper, & Roy, 2011) was designed for Irish. Twenty-four typically developing, sequential bilingual children immersed in Irish in the educational setting performed better on the English SRep task than on the Irish SRep task. Different patterns were observed in language performance across sentence types with performance on relative clauses being particularly poor in Irish. Similarly, differences were observed in error patterns with the highest number of errors of omission in Irish, and the highest number of substitution errors in English.

Author(s):  
Zur Hanis Hamim ◽  
Rogayah Abdul Razak ◽  
Badrulzaman Abdul Hamid

Sentence repetition task has been proven to be a tool that can detect language difficulties and is indicative of abnormal language. In Malaysia, studies on the language abilities of bilingual children in sentence repetition (SR) tasks are sparse. Therefore, this study is aimed at examining the morphosyntactic abilities of 60 bilingual Malay children aged 4;0 to 6;11 based on SR tasks in Malay (L1) and English (L2). In the SR task, participants were asked to listen carefully to sentences being read out and then repeat verbatim the sentences heard. Their responses were scored based on accuracy, syntax, grammar, and word categories. The findings demonstrated a significant difference between the two languages in terms of accuracy [df= 118, t=1.990, p= .049]; the Malay language had statistically higher scores compared to English scores. There was also a significant difference on the performance based on age factor, [Malay (df5,54=3.561, p= .007); English (df5,54=2.894, p= .022)]. The results also revealed that the omission of both content and function words was more prominent compared to other error types. A triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative data was done. The findings highlighted the morphosyntactic abilities of the bilingual children in both languages and error patterns produced.


Author(s):  
Bernadette Witecy ◽  
Tatjana Tolkmit ◽  
Martina Penke

The present study investigated the morphosyntactic abilities of German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome (DS) employing a sentence repetition task. In addition, a nonword repetition task was used to assess verbal short-term memory. The performance of 16 children/adolescents with DS was compared to that of 10 typically developing (TD) children. Group comparisons as well as the inspection of standard scores that were determined based on nonverbal mental age indicated a significant morphosyntactic impairment in most individuals with DS that could neither be solely attributed to the general cognitive delay nor to the observed deficit in verbal verbal short-term memory. Further qualitative results are presented.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 912-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Kaushanskaya ◽  
Ji Sook Park ◽  
Ishanti Gangopadhyay ◽  
Meghan M. Davidson ◽  
Susan Ellis Weismer

Purpose We aimed to outline the latent variables approach for measuring nonverbal executive function (EF) skills in school-age children, and to examine the relationship between nonverbal EF skills and language performance in this age group. Method Seventy-one typically developing children, ages 8 through 11, participated in the study. Three EF components, inhibition, updating, and task-shifting, were each indexed using 2 nonverbal tasks. A latent variables approach was used to extract latent scores that represented each EF construct. Children were also administered common standardized language measures. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between EF and language skills. Results Nonverbal updating was associated with the Receptive Language Index on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Fourth Edition (CELF-4). When composites denoting lexical–semantic and syntactic abilities were derived, nonverbal inhibition (but not shifting or updating) was found to predict children's syntactic abilities. These relationships held when the effects of age, IQ, and socioeconomic status were controlled. Conclusions The study makes a methodological contribution by explicating a method by which researchers can use the latent variables approach when measuring EF performance in school-age children. The study makes a theoretical and a clinical contribution by suggesting that language performance may be related to domain-general EFs.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1435-1457 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAULINE FRIZELLE ◽  
CLODAGH O'NEILL ◽  
DOROTHY V. M. BISHOP

AbstractAlthough sentence repetition is considered a reliable measure of children's grammatical knowledge, few studies have directly compared children's sentence repetition performance with their understanding of grammatical structures. The current study aimed to compare children's performance on these two assessment measures, using a multiple-choice picture-matching sentence comprehension task and a sentence repetition task. Thirty-three typically developing children completed both assessments, which included relative clauses representing a range of syntactic roles. Results revealed a similar order of difficulty of constructions on both measures but little agreement between them when evaluating individual differences. Interestingly, repetition was the easier of the two measures, with children showing the ability to repeat sentences they did not understand. This discrepancy is primarily attributed to the additional processing load resulting from the design of multiple-choice comprehension tasks, and highlights the fact that these assessments are invoking skills beyond those of linguistic competence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (11) ◽  
pp. 3700-3713
Author(s):  
Saleh Shaalan

Purpose This study examined the performance of Gulf Arabic–speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) on a Gulf Arabic nonword repetition (GA-NWR) test and compared it to their age- and language-matched groups. We also investigated the role of syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity in light of NWR theories. Method A new GA-NWR test was conducted with three groups of Gulf Arabic–speaking children: school-age children with DLD, language-matched controls (LCs), and age-matched controls (ACs). The test consisted of two- and three-syllable words that either had no clusters, medial clusters, final clusters, or medial + final clusters. Results The GA-NWR distinguished between the performance of children with DLD and the LC and AC groups. Results showed significant syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity effects. Differences between the DLD and typically developing groups were seen in two- and three-syllable nonwords; however, when compared on nonwords with no clusters, children with DLD were not significantly different from the LC group. Conclusions The GA-NWR test differentiated between children with DLD and their ACs and LCs. Findings, therefore, support its clinical utility in this variety of Arabic. Results showed that phonological processing factors, such as phonological complexity, may have stronger effects when compared to syllable length effects. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12996812


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4450-4463
Author(s):  
Rikke Vang Christensen

Purpose The aim of the study was to explore the potential of performance on a Danish sentence repetition (SR) task—including specific morphological and syntactic properties—to identify difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) relative to typically developing (TD) children. Furthermore, the potential of the task as a clinical marker for Danish DLD was explored. Method SR performance of children with DLD aged 5;10–14;1 (years;months; n = 27) and TD children aged 5;3–13;4 ( n = 87) was investigated. Results Compared to TD same-age peers, children with DLD were less likely to repeat the sentences accurately but more likely to make ungrammatical errors with respect to verb inflection and use of determiners and personal pronouns. Younger children with DLD also produced more word order errors that their TD peers. Furthermore, older children with DLD performed less accurately than younger TD peers, indicating that the SR task taps into morphosyntactic areas of particular difficulty for Danish children with DLD. The classification accuracy associated with SR performance showed high levels of sensitivity and specificity (> 90%) and likelihood ratios indicating good identification potential for clinical and future research purposes. Conclusion SR performance has a strong potential for identifying children with DLD, also in Danish, and with a carefully designed SR task, performance has potential for revealing morphosyntactic difficulties. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10314437


1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 809-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Carol Hudgins ◽  
Walter L. Cullinan

This study investigates the effects of sentence structure on the number of error sentences and response latency in a sentence-repetition task. Forty female college students repeated short and long test sentences containing either a single self-embedded or right-branching subject-focus or object-focus relative clause. Sentences were also controlled for deletion of the relative pronoun of the relative clause. Sentence structure was found to affect sentence elicited imitation response accuracy and latency in a manner similar to the effects of structure on ease of comprehension. The findings are consistent with a canonical-sentoid strategy explanation of sentence processing during sentence imitation.


1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1136-1146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Dollaghan ◽  
Thomas F. Campbell

A brief, processing-dependent, nonword repetition task, designed to minimize biases associated with traditional language tests, was investigated. In Study 1, no overlap in nonword repetition performance was found between a group of 20 school-age children enrolled in language intervention (LI) and a group of 20 age-matched peers developing language normally (LN). In Study 2, a comparison of likelihood ratios for the nonword repetition task and for a traditional language test revealed that nonword repetition distinguished between children independently identified as LI and LN with a high degree of accuracy, by contrast with the traditional language test. Nonword repetition may have considerable clinical utility as a screening measure for language impairment in children. Information on the likelihood ratios associated with all diagnostic tests of language is badly needed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Davidson ◽  
Benjamin Rusak ◽  
Christine Chambers ◽  
Penny Corkum

The purpose of this narrative review was to synthesize the existing literature on the impact of sleep on daytime functioning in both typically developing (TD) children and children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Correlational studies in children suggest that insufficient sleep and impaired daytime functioning are significantly associated; however, this does not address the causal relationships between sleep and daytime functioning. The review results indicated that there is limited experimental sleep manipulation research in children. In the eight studies that employed experimental methods to examine sleep restriction, the consequences of insufficient sleep were greatest for attention and inconsistent for other domains, such as cognition and emotion regulation. Despite the significant co-occurrence of ADHD and sleep problems, the experimental sleep research focused on the daytime impact of shorter sleep in children with ADHD is extremely limited and as such more research is needed.


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