Determinants of Language Impairment in Turkish-Persian Bilingual Children

Abstract

Background and Aims: Bilingual children are sometimes over-identified with language impairment and sometimes their language impairment under-identified that in either case, proper intervention is not possible. Accurate measurement of bilingual child language development involves assessing both of their languages. The purpose of this study was to identify a set of measures that would discriminate language impairment in bilingual Turkish-Persian children aged 5 to 7 years in Tehran. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, the language sample of 24 bilingual children with no language impairment and 8 bilingual children with language impairment was analyzed according to the linguistic measures of mean length of Terminable-unit, number of total words, number of different words, and number of grammatical errors per Terminable-unit. Children without language impairment were selected from kindergartens and schools by multi-stage cluster sampling method. Language-impaired children were selected by the Speech-Language Pathologist with at least three years of bilingual speech and language pathology services from Tehran-based speech therapy clinics in an accessible manner. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of nonverbal intelligence, age of exposure and duration of exposure to Persian. Parents responded to questions about their perceptions of their children’s speech and language skills and family history of speech and language problems. Results: Diagnostic analysis indicated that 3 measures discriminated the groups of children with sensitivity 87.5%: the Parent Report Questionnaire, number of total words, and mean length of T-unit. Conclusion: According to the results, Indicators of parental reports and language criteria in identifying the language damage of Turkish-Persian bilingual children can be of diagnostic use for speech and language pathologists.