ACQ Vol 13 no 3 2011

Table 2. Research articles identified Articles identified

Purpose

Type of study. Credibility of level

Tsybina & Eriks-Brophy (2010). Bilingual dialogic book-reading intervention for

Spanish-English bilingual children.

See detailed analysis in

table 4

preschoolers with slow expressive vocabulary development. Seung, Siddiqi, & Elder (2006). Intervention Case study. 3-year-old Korean-English, diagnosed Autism Spectrum NHMRC – no level outcomes of a bilingual child with autism. Disorder. 12 months intervention in Korean, then 6 months English introduced, then 6 months English-only . Made substantial gains in Justice & Fey, 2004 –

both languages with “transition” between dominant languages. Single-case experimental design. 4;6 year old Icelandic-English

Level III

Thordardottir, Elin, Ellis Weismer, & Smith.

NHMRC – no level

(1997). Vocabulary learning in bilingual and bilingual child, alternating treatments for vocabulary, monolingual monolingual clinical intervention. English and bilingual. Significant improvement in both conditions,

Justice & Fey, 2004 –

but better results in bilingual for home, but not school vocabulary.

Level II-3

Waltzman, Robbins, et al. (2003). Second oral language capabilities in children with

Eighteen profoundly hearing-impaired children who were reported to NHMRC –level III-3

be bilingual received cochlear implantation at age 5 or younger. On standard speech perception and receptive and expressive language measures, some pediatric cochlear implant recipients showed competency in a second spoken language in addition to their primary language. Majority showed age appropriate receptive and/or expressive language in their primary language commensurate with normal-hearing children.

cochlear implants.

Justice & Fey, 2004

– Level II-3

Wauters, Knoors, Vervloed, & Aarnoutse.

16 children, 6–10 years old, at school for deaf, learning Dutch and speechBite TM classified

(2001). Sign facilitation in word recognition. sign language of the Netherlands. Taught written forms with only

this study as a Randomised Control Trial, but scored it

oral accompaniment, or oral and sign. Randomly assigned to conditions. Higher gains came from the speech + sign condition,

only 3/10

although not for all individuals.

Kay-Raining Bird, Cleave, Trudeau, Thordardottir, Sutton, & Thorpe. (2005). The language abilities of bilingual children with Down syndrome. (Not strictly an intervention study; included because of

Compared the language abilities of 8 children with Down syndrome NHMRC –level III-1

being raised bilingually with those of 3 control groups matched on developmental level: monolingual children with DS (n = 14), monolingual typically developing (TD) children (n = 18), and bilingual TD children (n = 11). All children had at least 100 words in their productive vocabularies but a mean length of utterance of less than 3.5. Found similar profile of language abilities in bilingual children as for their monolingual peers. There was no evidence of a detrimental effect of bilingualism, but considerable diversity in the second-language abilities.

Justice & Fey, 2004 –

Level II-1

the population involved)

Table 3. Sample of speechBite TM search results Authors Title

Year

Method

Rating

Wauters et al.

Sign facilitation in word recognition

2001 Randomised controlled trial

03/10

Pihko et al.

Group intervention changes brain activity in bilingual

2007 Non-randomised controlled 03/10

language-impaired children

trial

Hammer et al.

Bilingual children’s language abilities and early reading

2007 Case series

N/A

outcomes in Head Start and kindergarten Seung H, Siddiqi S, Elder JH Intervention outcomes of a bilingual child with autism

2006 Single-subject design

N/A

end of the levels of evidence (Goldstein, 2006; Kohnert, 2010; Paradis, 2010; Thordardottir, 2010). Despite such critique, however, the conclusions drawn were similar and positive across the review papers. For example, Thordardottir concluded “Although the current research base is limited, the few studies available to date uniformly suggest that interventions that include a focus on both languages are superior to those that focus on only one language” (Thordardottir, 2010, p. 523). Further, “no study was found which showed a monolingual focus to be superior to a bilingual one” (Thordardottir, 2010, p.524). Similarly, Goldstein (2006) “did not find evidence suggesting bilingual intervention was counter-indicated” (p. 318). More specifically, these authors found no evidence that bilingualism exposes children to greater risk of language

problems across a range of conditions. For example, Paradis et al. (2003) concluded that bilingual children with specific language impairment were not “more impaired” than their participants that were monolingual (p. 123). In fact, Pikho et al. (2007) and Tsybina and Eriks-Brophy (2010) both cite evidence that early acquisition of a second language and regular use of two languages may have beneficial effects on various cognitive abilities in young children. Drawing conclusions from the available research Although there is only a small body of evidence available to answer the questions under review, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1) results were positive,

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ACQ Volume 13, Number 3 2011

ACQ uiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing