Language Intervention in Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder: A Systematic Review
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
KK Nair, V., Clark, G. T., et al. (2022).
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 58(2), 576-600.
This systematic review investigates the effects of language intervention on language and cognitive skill development as well as cross-language transfer for bilingual children with developmental language disorder.
Not stated
From database inception to December 2020
Studies with varied intervention designs
14
<div>Vocabulary intervention was found to be effective to improve receptive, expressive, and conceptual vocabulary. Treatment in L1 or bilingual treatment led to transfer effects to L2.</div>
<div>Four studies investigated morphosyntactic skills, finding improvements in mean length of utterance for words and morphemes. Larger effect sizes were seen in the bilingual as compared to the L2 treatment group. With bilingual treatment primarily conducted in L1, cross-language transfer was seen from L1 to L2 .</div>
<div>One study investigated early literacy intervention and found that treatment in the home language (L1) improved skills in both languages. Likewise, only one study targeted narrative skills; treatment in L2 targeting causal subordinating conjunctions and story grammar improved these areas, but no cross-language generalization from L2 to L1 was seen.</div>
<div>A study investigating phonological intervention found improved phonological discrimination for two-syllable, non-word pairs based the phonology of either L1 or L2. Cross-language transfer effects were not studied.</div>
<div>Studies investigating cognitive skills (e.g., processing speed, working memory) reported improvements in this domain as well as cross-domain effects to language (e.g., non-word repetition, grammatical tasks, composite language scores).</div>
