Title: Testing language learning in the Lab in order to detect oral language impairments in bilingual children: the promise of dynamic assessment.

Friday 14th June, 12 p.m.

Sala Victòria Sau, Deganat Facultat de Psicologia, Campus Mundet

Abstract: The language development of bilingual children is influenced by many environmental, linguistic, and cognitive factors (e.g., Paradis, 2019). Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish developmental language disorders (DLD) from insufficient exposure in bilingual children (e.g., Hasson et al., 2013), and alternatives beyond traditional standardized language tests are needed. Dynamic assessment (DA) procedures, designed to measure the learning process rather than its final product, are a promising solution (e.g., Camilieri & Law, 2007). We have developed two dynamic assessment procedures, an autonomous computer game and in an interactive shared reading situation, in which we compare how monolingual and bilingual children aged 5-8 years (learning French and Portuguese, or French and a variety of other languages), with and without DLD learn novel, invented nouns, verbs and inflections. We found that our tasks have good diagnostic accuracy (with a clear advantage for the interactive situation), showing large effects of clinical status independently of linguistic status (mono- vs. bilingual). We will discuss these results from a theoretical perspective and comment on practical implications, arguing for DA as an ideal complement to other promising language-fair measures (e.g., non-word repetition and narration) in the bilingual speech and language therapy clinic.