Bilingualism effects in the narrative comprehension of children with
Developmental Language Disorder and L2-Greek
Links with language, executive function and Theory of Mind
Narrative comprehension is a complex process that
requires the ability to integrate language information from the speech
signal with visual and contextual knowledge, while drawing also from social
cognition and executive functions. Although many studies have examined
narrative comprehension in typically-developing (TD) bilingual children and
suggested a bilingual advantage, evidence for bilingualism effects in the
narrative comprehension performance of children with Developmental Language
Disorder (DLD) is scant. This study explores narrative comprehension of
thirty 6 to 8 year old monolingual Greek and Albanian-Greek bilingual
children with DLD, along with two groups of age-matched TD monolingual Greek
and Albanian-Greek bilingual children. Children’s narrative comprehension
was assessed through the Greek versions of two stories (Cat
and Dog) which have been designed for retelling within the
Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives tool (Gagarina, Klop, Kunnari, Tantele, Välimaa,
Balčiūnienė, Bohnacker, & Walters, 2012) of the COST Action
IS0804. The children’s language, Theory of Mind (ToM) and updating skills
were independently measured. Both groups with DLD had lower language and
executive function performance than TD children. Bilinguals with and without
DLD, however, scored higher in narrative comprehension than their TD and DLD
monolingual peers. Similarly, bilingual children with DLD outperformed their
monolingual peers with DLD on the ToM task. TD children’s narrative
comprehension was predicted by their language and executive function
performance, while DLD bilingual children’s narrative comprehension was
predicted by performance on the ToM task and their dominance in L2/Greek.
The overall results indicate advantages for bilingual children with DLD in
narrative comprehension and ToM, while suggesting a link between these
enhanced skills.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Narrative comprehension and language ability
- 1.2Narrative comprehension and executive functions
- 1.3Narrative comprehension and Theory of Mind
- 2.Aims and research questions
- 3.Method
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2General procedure
- 3.3Materials and procedure
- 3.3.1Narrative task
- 3.3.2Language ability tests
- Expressive vocabulary in Greek
- Sentence Repetition Task (SRT)
- 3.3.3Executive function: 2-back task
- 3.3.4Online video verification first-order false belief (ToM)
task
- 3.4Analysis plan
- 4.Results
- 4.1Narrative task
- 4.2Language Ability tests
- 4.3Executive function: 2-back task
- 4.4Online video verification first-order false belief task
- 4.5Narrative comprehension, age, language dominance and independent
language ability, executive function and ToM assessments
-
5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusions
-
Acknowledgements
-
Note
-
References
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Appendix