Language Disorders In Bilingual Children and Adults

About the Book
This book provides speech-language pathologists, advanced students in communication disorders programs, and clinical language researchers with information needed to formulate and respond to questions related to effective service delivery to bilingual children and adults with suspected or confirmed language disorders. The bilinguals of interest represent varying levels of first and second language proficiency across the lifespan. That is, bilingualism is not determined here by a priori notions of relative proficiency in each language, but rather by the individual’s experience or need for two languages. Inclusive in this functional definition of bilingualism are typical children and adults who rely on two different languages, to varying degrees, to meet their communicative needs. Similarly, the four-year old language delayed child from a Spanish-speaking family who has just begun attending an English preschool program is considered bilingual, as is the 72 year-old retired professor with global aphasia who spoke both Vietnamese and English prior to the acquired language impairment. In each case, the relative level of skill or proficiency in each language is an important diagnostic factor, but it does not determine who is or who is not bilingual for the purposes of this text.

In separate chapters, the book synthesizes the literatures on bilingual children and adults with typical and atypical language skills to give the reader a deep understanding of the multiple factors that affect language development and disorders in those who rely on two languages for meaningful interactions. Assessment and intervention issues and methods are presented separately for each population. The focus for children is on primary developmental language disorder (specific language impairment, language learning impairment, isolated language impairment, late talkers). For adults the focus is on primary acquired language impairment, in particular aphasia. Although child and adult, typical and atypical populations are presented separately, all are considered within a unifying Dynamic Interactive Processing perspective. This broad theoretical framework emphasizes interactions between social, cognitive and communicative systems to form the basis for very practical implications related to assessment and intervention.