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Article published In:
Language Impairment in Bilingual Children: State of the art 2017
Edited by Theodoros Marinis, Sharon Armon-Lotem and George Pontikas
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7:3/4] 2017
► pp. 331–358

Identification of bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment in France

| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| INSERM, U930, Tours, France & Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
| Centre de Référence des Troubles du Langage et des Apprentissages de Tours

We report on the usefulness of three LITMUS tools in distinguishing bilingual children with SLI (Bi-SLI) from bilingual children with typical development (Bi-TD), in France: LITMUS-NWR-FR (non-word repetition), LITMUS-SR-FR (sentence repetition), and LITMUS-PABIQ (parental questionnaire). 82 bilingual children, aged 5–8, who had all been exposed to both French and either Arabic, Portuguese or Turkish, recruited both in ordinary schools and in SLP practices, were divided into Bi-TD (n = 61) and Bi-SLI (n = 21) groups based on parental questionnaire (LITMUS-PABIQ) information and standardized language scores in each language. Monolingual controls included 17 children with SLI and 37 TD children. NWR and SR significantly distinguished between the Bi-TD and the Bi-SLI children, and there was minimal impact of different factors related to bilingual development on children’s performance.

Keywords: Bilingualism, Specific Language Impairment, Acquisition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods and participants
    • 2.1Participants: recruitment and assignment into groups
    • 2.2The experimental protocol
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Do NWR and SR identify SLI in bilingual children?
    • 3.2Are age and French exposure/use linked to performance on NWR and SR?
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1The accuracy of LITMUS-SR-FR and LITMUS-NWR-FR
    • 4.2The LITMUS tools and the impact of bilingualism factors
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15019.alm
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