Presenter: Katherine Harris, McKay School of Education, Communication Disorders
Authors: Katherine Harris, Tess Owens, Tori Rydalch, Whitney Ahlstrom, Macy Whiting, Audrey Allen, Dr. Connie Summers
Faculty Advisor: Connie Summers, McKay School of Education, Communication Disorders
Institution: Brigham Young University
Diagnosing developmental language disorders (DLD) in bilingual children is challenging because many assessment tools are biased towards these children, which can lead to misdiagnosis (Bedore & Peña, 2008). Nonword repetition (NWR) is a language dependent processing task that is less biased than traditional language measures for culturally and linguistically diverse children (Guiberson & Rodriguez, 2013; Gutiérrez-Clellen & Simon-Cereijido, 2010; Kohnert et al., 2006). Because a child’s experience in their language(s) influences NWR performance (Summers et al., 2010), NWR tasks are needed that reflect the rules of how sounds are put together in their respective languages. This study will recruit approximately 90 participants from the Utah county area between the ages of 4 and 10 years old, who have exposure to both English and Spanish. Using a battery of language assessments such as the CELF-5, the BESA, and the DYMOND, these children will be divided into two groups: children with DLD and typically developing (TD) children. They will then be assessed with a variety of NWR tasks and the sensitivity and specificity of each task will be evaluated. Based on the diagnostic accuracy of the different NWR tasks, recommendations of specific guidelines for speech-language pathologists to use in clinical practice will be provided.