Engel de Abreu Pascale M J, Cruz-Santos Anabela, Puglisi Marina L
Education, Culture, Cognition and Society (ECCS) Research Unit, University of Luxembourg, Walferdange, Luxembourg.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2014 Nov;49(6):736-47. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12107. Epub 2014 Sep 11.
Recent evidence suggests that specific language impairment (SLI) might be secondary to general cognitive processing limitations in the domain of executive functioning. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on monolingual children with SLI and offers little evidence-based guidance on executive functioning in bilingual children with SLI. Studying bilinguals with SLI is important, especially in the light of increasing evidence that bilingualism can bring advantages in certain domains of executive functioning.
To determine whether executive functioning represents an area of difficulty for bilingual language-minority children with SLI and, if so, which specific executive processes are affected.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: This cross-cultural research was conducted with bilingual children from Luxembourg and monolingual children from Portugal who all had Portuguese as their first language. The data from 81 eight-year-olds from the following three groups were analysed: (1) 15 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg with an SLI diagnosis; (2) 33 typically developing Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilinguals from Luxembourg; and (3) 33 typically developing Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Portugal. Groups were matched on first language, ethnicity, chronological age and socioeconomic status, and they did not differ in nonverbal intelligence. Children completed a battery of tests tapping: expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, verbal and visuospatial working memory, selective attention and interference suppression.
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The bilingual SLI group performed equally well compared with their typically developing peers on measures of visuospatial working memory, but had lower scores than both control groups on tasks of verbal working memory. On measures of selective attention and interference suppression, typically developing children who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts. For selective attention, performance of the bilingual SLI group did not differ significantly from the controls. For interference suppression the bilingual SLI group performed significantly less well than typically developing bilinguals but not monolinguals.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: This research provides further support to the position that SLI is not a language-specific disorder. The study indicates that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate the same advantages in selective attention and interference suppression as typically developing bilinguals, they do not lag behind typically developing monolinguals in these domains of executive functioning. This finding raises the possibility that bilingualism might represent a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are associated with SLI in monolinguals.
最近的证据表明，特定语言障碍（SLI）可能继发于执行功能领域的一般认知加工限制。以往的研究几乎完全集中在患有SLI的单语儿童身上，对于患有SLI的双语儿童的执行功能，几乎没有基于证据的指导。研究患有SLI的双语者很重要，特别是鉴于越来越多的证据表明，双语在执行功能的某些领域可以带来优势。
确定执行功能是否是患有SLI的双语少数族裔儿童的一个困难领域，如果是，哪些特定的执行过程会受到影响。
这项跨文化研究是针对来自卢森堡的双语儿童和来自葡萄牙的单语儿童进行的，他们都以葡萄牙语作为第一语言。对来自以下三组的81名8岁儿童的数据进行了分析：（1）15名来自卢森堡的患有SLI诊断的葡萄牙语-卢森堡语双语儿童；（2）33名来自卢森堡的发育正常的葡萄牙语-卢森堡语双语儿童；（3）33名来自葡萄牙的发育正常的讲葡萄牙语的单语儿童。各组在第一语言、种族、实足年龄和社会经济地位方面进行了匹配，并且他们在非语言智力方面没有差异。儿童完成了一系列测试，包括：表达性和接受性词汇、句法理解、言语和视觉空间工作记忆、选择性注意和干扰抑制。
在视觉空间工作记忆测量方面，双语SLI组与发育正常的同龄人表现相当，但在言语工作记忆任务上的得分低于两个对照组。在选择性注意和干扰抑制测量方面，发育正常的双语儿童表现优于单语儿童。对于选择性注意，双语SLI组的表现与对照组没有显著差异。对于干扰抑制，双语SLI组的表现明显不如发育正常的双语儿童，但与单语儿童没有差异。
这项研究为SLI不是一种特定于语言的障碍这一观点提供了进一步的支持。该研究表明，尽管患有SLI的双语儿童在选择性注意和干扰抑制方面没有表现出与发育正常的双语儿童相同的优势，但他们在这些执行功能领域并不落后于发育正常的单语儿童。这一发现增加了双语可能是一种保护因素，可以抵御与单语者SLI相关的一些认知限制的可能性。
