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Part of
Language Impairment in Multilingual Settings: LITMUS in action across Europe
Edited by Sharon Armon-Lotem and Kleanthes K. Grohmann
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 29] 2021
► pp. 301–328

Crosslinguistic nonword repetition and narrative performance over time

A longitudinal study on 5- to 8-year-old children with diverse language skills

| Utrecht University
| Utrecht University

Previous research has shown that a crosslinguistic nonword repetition and narrative tasks can support the identification of developmental language disorder (DLD) in 5- and 6-year-old bilingual children. The tasks disentangled the effects of DLD and bilingualism and demonstrated good clinical validity. The present longitudinal study investigated whether similar results could be obtained at older ages by following the same children over a three-year period. The tasks were found to remain sensitive to DLD and insensitive to bilingualism. The magnitude of the effect of DLD decreased over time. Together, the instruments attained adequate diagnostic accuracy in a monolingual and bilingual group at each wave of testing, indicating that they can effectively identify DLD in different learning contexts and at different ages.

Keywords: developmental language disorder, bilingualism, nonword repetition, narrative, development
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Promising diagnostic tools
    • 2.2Nonword repetition and narrative skills over time
    • 2.3The present study
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Participants
      • 3.1.1Bilingualism
      • 3.1.2Developmental language disorder
      • 3.1.3Group comparisons
    • 3.2Materials and procedures
      • 3.2.1Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Task (CL-NWRT)
      • 3.2.2Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN)
    • 3.3Data-analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Correlations
    • 4.2Effects of DLD and bilingualism
      • 4.2.1CL-NWRT
      • 4.2.2MAIN
        • 4.2.2.1Comprehension of the model story
        • 4.2.2.2Production
        • 4.2.2.3Comprehension of the production story
        • 4.2.2.4Number of internal state terms
    • 4.3Diagnostic validity
      • 4.3.1Monolingual group
      • 4.3.2Bilingual group
  • 5.Discussion
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.29.10boe
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