Category: Communication Sciences & Disorders
Helping bilingual children
October 19, 2023 Written by Amy Cherry | Photo by Ashley Barnas
91原创 awarded $3M+ grant to test intervention on bilingual children with developmental language disorder
Amanda Owen Van Horne sits on the floor while a child mixes up cake batter in a play kitchen.聽聽
While at play, an intensive language therapy program is also underway for preschool-aged children with developmental language disorder (DLD) at the 91原创鈥檚 Treatment Efficacy and Learning Language聽. The child says, 鈥淗im cooking.鈥 Owen Van Horne repeats back, 鈥淗e is cooking.鈥澛
DLD is a problem with learning and using language not attributed to a hearing impairment or intellectual disability, according to聽, an organization that aims to raise awareness of DLD on which Owen Van Horne serves on the board. One of the hallmark signs of DLD is an inability to speak in complete grammatical sentences.聽
鈥淒LD is not just a problem with how you pronounce words; the disorder interferes with understanding and using language,鈥 Owen Van Horne said. 鈥淪o, we try to reuse what the child already said because it tells us they know the word; they鈥檙e interested in the topic, and if we reuse those sentences and turn them into longer, more complex and grammatically correct sentences, the child also has the cognitive resources to realize what I said, and whether I added 鈥榠s鈥 to form the complete sentence.鈥澛
Owen Van Horne,聽professor of聽communication sciences and disorders聽at 91原创鈥檚聽College of Health Sciences, and her colleague,聽, professor of communication sciences and disorders at the聽, are testing recast therapy as a language intervention for bilingual children with DLD for the first time. Together, they seek to learn whether the language of instruction impacts syntax learning.聽
Owen Van Horne and Castilla-Earls have been聽聽a five-year $3.27 million grant from the聽聽to further define the relationship between a child鈥檚 language proficiency in English or Spanish and the language of instruction to determine whether that impacts learning.
A pilot study launched during the COVID-19 pandemic involving 11 students with DLD from Texas yielded promising results. It was聽聽over the summer in the聽Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
鈥淲hen we taught in one language, most kids benefitted in the other language,鈥 Owen Van Horne said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not what we expected to find, and we鈥檙e pretty excited to build on that conclusion.鈥澛犅