Andersson Ketty, Hansson Kristina, Rosqvist Ida, Lyberg Åhlander Viveka, Sahlén Birgitta, Sandgren Olof
Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Logopedics, Phoniatrics, and Audiology, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Department of School Development and Leadership, Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jul 17;10:1586. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01586. eCollection 2019.
Assessment of bilingual children in only one language fails to acknowledge their distributed linguistic competence and has been shown to overidentify language disorder in bilingual populations. However, other factors, sometimes associated with bilingualism, may also contribute to low results in language assessments. Our aim was to examine the impact of these factors on language abilities. We used the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Fourth Edition, Swedish (CELF-4) to investigate core language abilities of 224 7- to 8-year-old children. Results showed 30 and 80% of monolinguals and bilinguals, respectively, performing more than 1 SD below the normative sample mean, calling into question the clinical utility of the test. However, participant and school characteristics provided a deeper understanding of the skewed results. In isolation, bilingualism predicted 38% of the variance in the CELF-4 Core scores. With level of parental education entered the variance explained by the model increased to 52%, but the unique contribution of bilingualism was reduced to 20%. Finally, with information added on school characteristics and enrollment in the school's recreation center the model explained an additional two percent, with the unique contribution of bilingualism further reduced to 9%. The results indicate an increased risk for low results on the CELF-4 Core when children present with multiple risk factors. This highlights the need to look beyond bilingualism in language assessment of bilingual children and adolescents and to consider other explanations to academic struggle. Available interventions must be considered and applied proportionately to their respective impact on the individual's development.
仅用一种语言对双语儿童进行评估无法认可他们的分布式语言能力，并且已表明会过度识别双语人群中的语言障碍。然而，其他有时与双语现象相关的因素，也可能导致语言评估结果偏低。我们的目的是研究这些因素对语言能力的影响。我们使用《语言基本能力临床评估 - 第四版，瑞典语》（CELF - 4）来调查224名7至8岁儿童的核心语言能力。结果显示，分别有30%的单语儿童和80%的双语儿童表现比常模样本均值低1个标准差以上，这让人质疑该测试的临床效用。然而，参与者和学校特征能让人更深入地理解这些偏差结果。单独来看，双语现象可预测CELF - 4核心分数中38%的方差。纳入父母教育水平后，模型解释的方差增加到52%，但双语现象的独特贡献降至20%。最后，加入学校特征和是否参加学校娱乐中心的信息后，模型又解释了另外2%的方差，双语现象的独特贡献进一步降至9%。结果表明，当儿童存在多种风险因素时，在CELF - 4核心测试中获得低分的风险会增加。这凸显了在评估双语儿童和青少年的语言能力时，需要超越双语现象去考虑，并思考学业困难的其他原因。必须考虑现有的干预措施，并根据它们对个体发展的各自影响进行适当应用。
