Word reading in monolingual and bilingual children with developmental language disorder

Elise de Bree, Tessel Boerma, Britt Hakvoort, Elma Blom, Madelon van den Boer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are reported to have word reading difficulties. However, previous research has focused mostly on monolingual children. The present study used two existing datasets to assess word reading outcomes of bilingual children with DLD. In Study 1, we compared word reading outcomes of monolingual and bilingual children with and without DLD (n = 93 monolingual DLD; n = 33 bilingual DLD, n = 42 monolingual TD; n = 74 bilingual TD). In Study 2, we compared those of monolingual (n = 91) and bilingual children with DLD (n = 51) on the basis of school record data. Findings from both studies show mean poor word reading outcomes and a high incidence of poor readers in the groups of children with DLD. Despite lower oral language outcomes of bilingual children in the mainstream language, reading outcomes of monolingual and bilingual children (with/without DLD) did not differ or outcomes were even better for the bilingual children. Overall, these findings indicate that DLD is a risk factor for word reading difficulties, while bilingualism is not.
Original languageEnglish
Article number102185
Pages (from-to)1-10
Number of pages10
JournalLearning and Individual Differences
Volume98
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2022

Keywords

  • Developmental language disorder
  • Word reading
  • Bilingualism

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