Bilingualism effects in the narrative comprehension of children with Developmental Language Disorder and L2-Greek

Abstract

Narrative comprehension is a complex process that requires the ability to integrate language information from the speech signal with visual and contextual knowledge, while drawing also from social cognition and executive functions. Although many studies have examined narrative comprehension in typically-developing (TD) bilingual children and suggested a bilingual advantage, evidence for bilingualism effects in the narrative comprehension performance of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is scant. This study explores narrative comprehension of thirty 6 to 8 year old monolingual Greek and Albanian-Greek bilingual children with DLD, along with two groups of age-matched TD monolingual Greek and Albanian-Greek bilingual children. Children’s narrative comprehension was assessed through the Greek versions of two stories (Cat and Dog) which have been designed for retelling within the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives tool (Gagarina, Klop, Kunnari, Tantele, Välimaa, Balčiūnienė, Bohnacker, & Walters, 2012) of the COST Action IS0804. The children’s language, Theory of Mind (ToM) and updating skills were independently measured. Both groups with DLD had lower language and executive function performance than TD children. Bilinguals with and without DLD, however, scored higher in narrative comprehension than their TD and DLD monolingual peers. Similarly, bilingual children with DLD outperformed their monolingual peers with DLD on the ToM task. TD children’s narrative comprehension was predicted by their language and executive function performance, while DLD bilingual children’s narrative comprehension was predicted by performance on the ToM task and their dominance in L2/Greek. The overall results indicate advantages for bilingual children with DLD in narrative comprehension and ToM, while suggesting a link between these enhanced skills.